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It seems like almost every professional in the residential tech channel is talking about lighting. It’s the next new “shiny” thing (literally) that has everyone’s attention. But unlike home theater, HDTV, surround sound, or even the “smart home,” lighting is one of those essential areas of a residence that no one can go without and is a prime candidate for upgrading.
In the days of incandescent bulbs, home lighting was fairly status quo, with the exception of simple dimming. For most of the world, it has been good enough for a builder’s electrician to scatter some lighting cans evenly across the ceiling and call it a day. But, with LED lighting, that just doesn’t cut it anymore. Lighting is often uneven and a little cold, making homes feel less comfortable and even less functional.
Now, professional integrators, already experienced in pleasing their homeowner clients, are learning that they can move into the lighting category and help improve the aesthetics of a living space with warm-dim and tunable white bulbs, as well as angled and focused lighting fixtures that can help set a mood, enhance artwork, or mimic the color temperature of the sun.
I spoke recently with Zach Simpson, VP of design and sales at SoundVision, a custom integration company in Mooresville, NC, who is doubling down on lighting. His company is a member of the ProSource buying group, which has been an early proponent of lighting with their large membership. Simpson told me that his company recently designed a new experience center for demonstrating smart home tech to potential customers but realized too late that their new lighting showroom just wouldn’t cut it.
After meeting with David Warfel and Mark Langston of Light Can Help You at ProSource’s Lighting and Technology Learning Center in Dallas, TX, Simpson came home and told his business partner Mark DiPietro that they needed to scrap their lighting setup and invest in a better demo.
“Our experience center has been really effective, but the lighting showroom is not good enough,” Simpson said.
He said that the big revelation in Dallas was seeing the difference between standard LED lighting cans in a ceiling versus a full lighting design with properly dimmed fixtures. Being able to demonstrate that contrast in their own showroom is the new goal.
“In Dallas, you walk into a space that’s lit normally, and you’re like, ‘Ah, the TVs are beautiful, the furniture is beautiful, the art is beautiful, but the light is just average,” Simpson recalled. “Next, they turn those lights off, and you re-enter into better lighting with more layers, and at the end of that experience, there’s no way you could return to the first kind of lighting in your own house. There’s no way that I could go back to four cans and a ceiling fan in every room.”
Simpson told his leadership team that if they do nothing else, they need to hire an electrician to come back into all of the areas in the showroom where they’ve already taken all the “bad lighting” out and put in better lighting, and have them add some of that old lighting back in.
“Then, when clients come in, I can turn everything off, but leave the standard stuff on. That’s where we will start our demonstration, and then we will show them how we can make it all so much better.”
As Simpson put it, that sort of experience has a lot of power.
Being able to demonstrate that contrast in their own showroom is the new goal.
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Don Kreski recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of Kreski Marketing Consultants, a firm he founded to provide marketing planning, PR and creative services to integrators, consultants, and manufacturers in the AV and IT industries. Prior to striking out on his own, he was the director of marketing for companies in the AV integration channel. A professional writer and photographer, he works with a talented group of freelance designers, animators, and web developers to offer clients a complete package of services. On p. 32 he writes the odd story of the MetaReal mansion.
LaRue Martz is the vice president of sales at Uniden Cellular. With more than 20 years of experience as sales executive for various leading telecommunications companies, he understands the communications needs of residential and commercial industries, and the importance of cellular boosters to better connectivity. As the demand for cellular boosters continues to grow, Martz plays an instrumental role in expanding Uniden Cellular’s market presence and reputation as a leading provider of innovative cellular boosters. On p. 38, he explains how booster tech can improve life in a smart home.
Michael Heiss is a former product and marketing executive at Harman International, who was responsible for many breakthrough audio and video products. He also was a promotion manager at NBC and was key to the development of hotel in-room movies and created the first nationwide movie rental service for Beta and VHS cassettes. Heiss served two terms on the CEDIA Board and led their Technology Council. He is also a CEDIA Fellow, recipient of CEDIA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a member of the TV Academy, the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and is a Life Member of both IEEE and SMPTE. On p. 66, Heiss writes about how videoconferencing tech is evolving as “work from home” shifts toward a hybrid “work from anywhere” model.
Jay Basen is retired from his 40-year career in professional software development, but he still keeps his tech skills sharp with special projects and product reviews. During his career, the Silver Certified Crestron programmer specialized in the design, development, and installation of automation, building management, and energy management systems for residential and commercial buildings. On p. 40, he writes about water savings tech options and on p. 76 he reviews the Somfy Clever Tilt Motor.
Henry Clifford founded Richmond, VA-based Livewire in 2001 to meet the growing demand for technologically integrated homes and businesses. In January 2018, he co-founded Parasol, a remote service support company, and has served on the CEDIA Board of Directors. His most recent venture was the recent launch of IntegrateU, a professional on-boarding service for the custom integration industry. On p. 80 Clifford review the AVPro Edge AC-EX40-444-KIT HDMI Balun and on p. 82 he explains how the ScreenBeam 1100 Plus performs as the ultimate virtual meeting solution.
The varied interests and use cases for smart home products among multifamily property managers open up many new opportunities. Consumers seek value from connected devices, integration, monitoring, and always-on services, and property owners need ways to differentiate and add value to drive higher rental rates. At the same time, many service providers are struggling to redefine the service bundle as households abandon traditional cable TV packages in favor of OTT services. According to latest complimentary whitepaper from Parks Associates and SmartRent, titled “Smart Solutions - Boosting Revenue in Multifamily Properties,” property owners are exploring security and other smart home solutions as new offerings to bundle with broadband services, and the multi-dwelling units (MDU) sector is a prime market to introduce a broad swath of people to these value propositions — and ultimately create lifelong customers.
of MDU managers and owners report that smart home devices increase rent by between
and
of apartment residents who lack smart home technology would like to see it deployed across their communities.
Source:
Renters show a willingness to pay
higher rents when smart home devices are available in the property.
of MDU owners and managers with at least one smart home property report their vendor provides after-sale technical support, with the majority at no extra cost.
of property managers and owners with
property managers and owners
smart
property
likely”
property are “very likely”
of MDUs with smart home devices installed inside residential units report using a hub, and this will become an even stronger benefit as more MDUs tap into the smart home ecosystem.
At Leon, creativity is the fuel that feeds the fire. And for 25 years we’ve been honored to collaborate with all of our industry partners who share that same passion.
The Launch Pad area will be my focus, I am looking forward to finding the thing that no one knows about or has not seen yet. That hidden gem that doesn’t get all the press or accolades prior to show but is discovered by a chance encounter or walk-by that can’t be measured in a press release or email. That cool new technology or service that will create new opportunities for our industry. — Avi Rosenthal, Bluesalve Partners, Ashburn, VA
We are moving locations and have designed a new space to highlight products and solutions that simplify and enrich life, holistically. Products that involve lighting, healthy living, and automation that goes beyond the traditional “AV” company. Our industry has access to some of the best technologies that many people still don’t know exist. At this year’s Expo, I’ll be looking for special pieces (Vestaboard, for instance) that will fill out our design center. — Jamie Briesemeister, Integration Controls, St. Louis, MO
I am most interested in researching new technology opportunities in the outdoor space, cyber security solutions/improvements for our customer’s networks, and home office and wellness solutions. The disruption of COVID in years past has most integrators changing a portion of their business focus to what is most important to their clients, especially because many of them are spending much more quality time at home with family and friends. — Patrick Hartman, Technology Design Associates, Carson City, NV
I’m excited see the Origin Acoustics booth this year. They have been a longtime supporter of CEDIA and my company, TruMedia. They really showed their true colors as being a manufacturer for their dealers, not only in supporting the show last year, but also by having creative and innovative ways to help their dealers stay in business and grow over the last couple of years.
— Amanda Wildman, TruMedia, Ada, MI
I’m more excited to see the engagement from our company’s new team members who have never been to CEDIA than I am focused on any particular brand or product. It’s so important to inspire the next generation of technology experts, and CEDIA allows those attending to “drink from the fire hose” with demos, presentations, and interactions with vendors that simply can’t be replicated virtually.
— Lamar Gibson, Miestro, Memphis, TN
I’m most interested in lighting fixture and lighting control companies and products as they relate to tunable lighting. In my mind there is no doubt that this will be a great new product category for us and the CEDIA channel over the course of this decade. — Gordon van Zuiden, cyberManor, Los Gatos, CA
I always look forward to seeing the new home theater demos, from JBL Synthesis, Trinnov, Kaleidescape, Barco, and Sonus Faber. Also, I’m personally in the market for a new video projector, so I can’t wait to see the new true 4K laser models from JVC and Sony and figure out what I’ll be putting in my personal theater! — John Sciacca, Custom Theater and Audio, Murrells Inlet, SC
At CEDIA Expo you meet the engineers who created the products. You can add your two cents on how a product works in the wild. You can find a programmer that might help you succeed at your next large project. You’ll find a salesperson who will help you close that next big job or an operations person who will share their job descriptions with you. This cannot be recreated virtually. Of course, seeing the newest, largest flat screens is always great, too.
— Heather Sidorowicz, Southtown Audio Video, Hamburg, NY
I’m looking for new lighting fixture innovations, new power managementrelated progress, and getting together with the many industry groups and friends who I haven’t seen face to face in a while. Lutron, Savant, and Snap One are always of primary interest, as well as Sonance, Sony, and many more of our great partners new product releases. — George Harrison, Harrison Home Systems, Golden, CO
WE ASK INDUSTRY INSIDERS ONE QUESTION
When you go to the professional home integration trade show CEDIA Expo this fall, what specific company, product, or tech category are you most interested in seeing in person and why?
Comprehensive detection and reporting with hybrid flexibilitywired, wireless, or both.
Z-Wave integration and a dynamic rules engine provides easy control and automation of lights, thermostats, locks and more.
Advanced app and cloud portal streamlines system configuration, management, and control with powerful tools and a consistent user experience
Windows are one of the most distinct design elements of any home or business. Legrand believes they should be outfitted that way. The brand has launched new fabrics for its shading systems that feature designer collections from Coulisse, Twitchell, and Phifer.
The curated collections include new decorative, solar screen, sustainable, and roomdarkening options. With this latest release, Legrand now offers 753 fabrics in its portfolio.
“Our latest collections have been expanded and curated to reflect today’s style trends, delivering many decorative window covering options that can pair with black-out fabrics to create the most functional yet beautiful window treatments available,” said Charlie Derk, Legrand’s director of product marketing, shading, and residential controls. “They’re the perfect solution for homeowners looking for something modern and different.”
These new collections from Legrand Shading Systems run the gamut from delicate screens to richly textured linen black-out fabrics.
The Coulisse line reflects European style with textures and colors inspired by nature. Legrand Shading Systems has added several Coulisse collections that provide many light filtering
levels to create attractive, elegant finishes, including Como, Hampton, Mexico, Mombassa, Salvador, and Santiago styles.
The Twitchell fabric line encapsulates laidback luxury to achieve an all-American boho feel with meticulously designed, high-quality woven fabrics. Made in the U.S., Twitchell’s EarthTex and Shadeview solar screen collections provide a color and style not found in other fabric lines.
Sustainable meets chic with the new options in Legrand’s Phifer fabric line, featuring stylish, high-performance fabrics with several certified sustainable selections. Phifer has been expanded with additional colors, lighting-filtering and black-out choices, including an aluminum-backperformance-plus option.
Legrand’s growing Blackout collections goes beyond basic to offer a variety of black-out styles and shades, whether customers want a dark, goth-inspired look or a summery light
color that will still keep sunrays out.
For windows that need the option of both light filtering and room darkening, Legrand has several matching light-filtering and black-out fabrics available, which utilize one set of brackets for two shades. In addition, these new fabrics pair with Legrand Shading Systems’ new Designer Series decorative brackets and hembar endcaps.
Legrand Shading Systems has created two new fabric books packed with all the new fabrics. Dealers can order the new books featuring Coulisse and the other new high-end fabric collections on the online service center (OSC) or from their customer service rep. Fabric swatches can be ordered, as well. x
By Anthony Leo
The C SEED M1 appears as a sculpture-like column rising silently from the floor, unfolding an enormous 165-inch 4K MicroLED TV display with a high precision frame machined from a solid block of aviation-grade aluminum alloy to provide the ultimate TV experience.
The M1 continues the C SEED legacy that started with the company’s 201 TV by Porsche Design Studio. While 4K MicroLED technology creates vibrant colors and fine resolution, a special screen surface treatment displays the all-important deep black color. In addition to on-board HDR Plus (High Dynamic Range), C SEED´s Adaptive Gap Calibration Technology (AGC) renders borders between the display´s wings totally invisible.
“Trendsetting, contemporary, uncluttered, free from all visual ballast. In these environments, big wall-mounted TV screens are an anachronism in modern interior design,” said C SEED Managing Partner, Alexander Swatek. “Therefore, C SEED took a totally different path and came up with a revolutionary design.”
Designer Stefan Pani created the massive TV’s frame design with an invisibly integrated highperformance speaker system that rises silently from the ground, unfolds, and then settles smoothly on an elegant base.
Building upon almost a decade of experience in designing and manufacturing luxury TVs for high-end indoor, outdoor, and marine applications, C SEED has again picked the uncompromising best in design, engineering, and technology.
The C SEED M1 is available in four colors and a choice of casings.
“The M1 provides unique entertainment in brilliant quality without compromising the character of a room — the one ideal solution for integrating large TV systems into spacious contemporary interior design,” Swatek said. x
The Atlona Avance™ Series of HDMI extender kits are the latest generation of reliable HDBaseT extenders for 4K/UHD AV signals. Avance is made up of five kits to suit a wide variety of budget, distance, signal, and power requirements, all of which include powerful integration features that ensure video transmission integrity and quality.
In
Prevents extension of unsupported resolutions to increase the integrity of video transmission
Improves interoperability with legacy and low-quality HDMI video sources
Enables easy verification of cabling, termination, and link quality at the point of install
40/100M
TX RX
Kits are available with either local pow er supplies, remote where TX powers RX, or bidirectional, BP, where power is supplied by either TX or RX
IP/RS-232/IR
Avance offers kits with no control, ex tension of RS-232 and IR, or extension of Ethernet, RS-232, and IR
EXTEND 4K
Extend 4K/UHD 60Hz 4:2:0 at distanc es up to either 40M (130’) or 100M (330’) over Category 6A/7
CEDIA is Taking a Leadership Role in Developing Recommended Practices Tailored for Residential Technologies and Projects
By David MeyerAs integrators work with technology every day, standards form a crucial foundation for our industry. SMPTE summarizes the role of standards very succinctly by saying it’s “where quality meets interoperability.” Poppy Crum, keynote speaker at CEDIA Expo 2021, advises that “standards ensure consistency of experience.” But then there’s also the timeless quote from Andrew S. Tanenbaum: “The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.” And somehow that quote, however facetious in intent, manages to be truer every year.
While integrators are generally aware that there are numerous standards and may even be quite familiar with some of them, most frankly don’t have time to really keep up with developments — or even have the inclination, for that matter. That’s why we at CEDIA do. It’s not just about monitoring and interpreting standards across the industry, though. As an ANSI accredited standards development organization (SDO), CEDIA also takes a leadership role in developing recommended practices specifically tailored for residential technologies and projects.
Three current efforts by the CEDIA/CTA joint working group called R10 all deal with CEDIA’s traditional sweet spot of home cinema/AV. Recommended Practice (RP) 22 “Immersive Audio Design” will couple with RP23 “Immersive Video Design.” For the record, their numbering carries over as major revisions of existing recommended practices: CEB22 and 23. The third, all new effort, RP1 — with the working title “Performance Facts” — will support both by advocating the provision and integrity of product specifications so design engineers can better predict implemented system performance.
I had these efforts in mind when I recently attended an SMPTE event in Australia under the auspices of the Technical Committee on Cinema
Sound Systems (25CSS). Participants were evaluating audio performance in various commercial cinema rooms and provided constructive feedback on detail, immersion, dynamics, subtlety, intelligibility, etc. What was abundantly clear to me was that the traditional line of thinking that the goal of home cinema is to recreate the commercial experience simply doesn’t hold true today… if it ever really did.
Commercial and home cinema have wholly different monetary motivations, but both aim to deliver entertainment, immersion of the audience, and the coveted “suspension of disbelief.” But importantly, home cinema does not follow commercial cinema in the sense of one coming after the other. Both are developed in surprisingly close parallel by experts in their respective fields. I quickly recognized that what SMPTE’s 25CSS is ultimately aiming to achieve for auditoriums is in direct parallel to what CEDIA/CTA’s RP22 aims to achieve for home entertainment spaces.
Commercial deals with large room acoustics that typically have a high reliance on arrays, whereas home cinema must manage small room acoustics and more highly values spatial resolution. Small rooms are actually more technically challenging in both regards, but they overlap in many technical aspects, too.
On the video side of things, Digital Cinema Initiatives released an addendum to the DCI spec
in March 2022 concerning HDR. It specifies a brightness range of 0.005300 cd/m2 (nits), which equates to a rather considerable 16 stops (factors of 2). That means truly deep blacks, akin to OLED levels! While this spec is not compulsory, it does serve to influence CEDIA/CTA with RP23 for HDR projection in the home, as it does the SMPTE channel and commercial cinema operators.
My point is that home, or more specifically, private cinema is far from the toddling little sibling of commercial cinema. Both are highly technical and nuanced, particularly when it comes to audio. A high degree of engineering knowledge and skill is required for their design, installation, and commissioning.
I’ve also observed that commercial contractors generally have higher awareness of their relevant standards and RPs. Perhaps that’s like in IT where commercial networking is stricter in applying standards than in residential, motivated by factors like productivity and accountability? Either way, it’s to their credit as standards and RPs are there for good reason, with better and more consistent outcomes.
Designers of private cinemas with high awareness and adherence to current recommended practices can demonstrate the most technically excellent and immersive systems of all. Better than commercial. Think flying commercial compared to flying private; but also consider that a private jet that’s not built to standards will likely crash and burn.
After all, it’s for you that some of the best minds in the industry voluntarily collaborate for many months or even years in producing documents like RP22, RP23, and RP1. There’s so much to gain by using them. x
CEDIA/CTA standards and recommended practices are available at cedia.net.
Sound United delivers the premier mix of brands and support programs that turn your sales and profit volumes up.
Our high-performance products and expert field support ensure your integrations are as powerful and seamless as possible—so your customers are always excited to crank it up.
To hear more about our latest programs and innovations, visit us at CEDIA 2022.
BOOTH #12009
The RTI MS-1 Music Streamer Adds a Single Stream Solution to the RTI Music Family
By Jeremy Glowacki
Music is a touchpoint of life, whether you’re at home or at a business, and RTI wants to make it easy and enjoyable to access music playlists and streaming services from within the RTI control experience.
RTI has expanded its family of music control solutions with the new MS-1 Music Streamer, which was designed as a single-stream solution for RTI control systems in residential or commercial settings. It also can add a stream to an existing RTI Music system.
“Together, the MS-1 and the threestream MS-3 give the integrator options to cost-effectively get the right number of streams into a project,” said Neal Ellsworth, RTI director of product management.
Like the three-stream MS-3, the MS-1 delivers high-resolution audio (24bit/192kHz) from the most popular streaming music services or from a local NAS to any room with the touch of a button.
The RTI MS-1 Music Streamer can connect to popular streaming services or a client’s personal music collection on a local NAS drive or computer with lossless audio (FLAC and ALAC) supported. Integrated with RTI control and RTI Music, users can access playlists and search favorite songs, artists, and albums on their preferred services, all within the RTI control app.
AirPlay enables any user — even a guest —
RTI’s MS-1 seamlessly delivers high-resolution audio (24bit/192kHz) from the most popular streaming music services or from a local NAS to any room.
with Apple Music to play from their chosen platform on any Apple device. To build a queue of songs on the fly, the Music Queue feature enables “play now,” “play later,” or “play soon.” Favorites playlists can integrate songs from multiple services and local devices.
RTI Music integrates with a variety of streaming services, including Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM, iHeart, TuneIn, and an AirPlay option that enables Apple Music and Amazon Music. Newly added services include BBC Sounds and Qobuz. It also integrates with commercial music streaming service providers
SiriusXM For Business as well as SoundMachine, with which RTI recently partnered.
The partnership provides integrators installing the RTI Music streaming audio system with recurring monthly revenue options featuring SoundMachine’s fully licensed, cloud-based music service for businesses. Together as a service, this solution enables RTI dealers to offer and monetize fully licensed music services (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN, RE-SOUND and Global Music Rights) in restaurants, bars, hotels, and other commercial applications. x
Vantage Lighting Controls Partners with No. 8 Lighting’s Tunable White LED Technology and PureEdge Lighting
By Walter Joseph“Designing a comprehensive lighting plan can quickly become complicated when trying to find a controller that is beautifully appointed, compatible, and will yield the results light fixture manufacturers have worked tirelessly to achieve,” said Dave Keller, business development, Legrand Residential Shading & Controls.
That’s why the Vantage brand of Legrand’s Building Control Systems (BCS) division has formed strategic alliances with tunable white lighting fixtures manufacturer PureEdge Lighting and No. 8 Lighting, a brand of architecturally inspired recessed and surfacemount fixtures.
The alliance with No. 8 Lighting ensures that the company’s fixtures pair seamlessly with Vantage’s LHUMAN human-centric lighting solution to offer an even better design experience in residential and commercial projects. The PureEdge Lighting partnership pairs Vantage’s customizable lighting controls with PureEdge’s tunable white, ranging from 2200K to 6500K, RGB, and RGB+TW (tunable white) lighting systems.
“Now, designers who are selecting No. 8 Lighting’s stunning and innovative fixtures can feel confident that they have a control system and keypads that align with the luxury and elegance for which No. 8 Lighting is known,” Keller added.
The driving force behind No. 8 Lighting is the company’s tunable white LED technology. The technology features independent control of color temperature (CCT) and intensity. Independently controlling CCT and intensity requires more sophisticated lighting controls — both criteria Vantage meets. By combining
Vantage’s LHUMAN solution and sleek control keypad offering with No. 8 Lighting fixtures and lighting products, resellers, designers, specifiers, and end users can enjoy a superior lighting solution crafted for the perfect lighting scenario.
Among No. 8 Lighting’s catalog of lighting products is the high-performance 804S ceiling downlight featuring multiple patents. Part of the 800 Series, the ultimate recessed LED downlight offers an array of field interchangeable lamp module options, lumen packages, and optic, driver, and trim options. The universal design is meant to be future-proof and accepts adjustable, fixed, wall wash, and mirror reflector lamp modules. All 800 Series housings are ICRated, airtight, and CCEA approved, and can be installed in direct contact with standard or spray-foam insulation.
PureEdge Lighting was founded in Chicago by Gregory Kay in 2004, and now manufactures architectural, low-voltage LED lighting systems for indoor and outdoor spaces. Controlling the lights is a crucial element of a versatile and easyto-use lighting system.
“With today’s intense focus on incorporating innovative and tunable lighting fixtures, the control solution needs to be anything but ordinary,” said Amy Hahne, president of Vantage at Legrand, North America. “PureEdge Lighting’s portfolio of award-winning options truly stands out in this space, and with this alliance, integrators have Vantage’s control solutions that are just as noteworthy and up to the task of dialing in the perfect lighting environment.” x
Lithe Audio’s Ceiling, Surface, and Garden Speakers Require Only a Power Source to Provide Simple Audio Streaming
By Jeremy GlowackiLithe Audio’s first Bluetooth ceiling speaker hit the European market five years ago. Since then, the company led by Amit Ravat has been building its international footprint and bolstering its product lineup with a range of allin-one multiroom audio systems that deliver flexibility, scalability, ease of installation, and exceptional audio quality.
The U.K.-based manufacturer of wireless audio systems for residential and commercial installations is now introducing its lineup of allin-one ceiling, surface, and garden speakers to the U.S. market for the first time.
Featuring an integrated amplifier, connectivity, and high-quality speaker components in one device, each system requires only a power source for installation, making it simple for integrators to deliver audio streaming in single rooms, distributed systems, and outdoors while enabling the creation of wireless surround-sound home theater systems.
“We’re thrilled to be bringing our unique solutions to the U.S. market and can’t wait to show integrators the advantages they provide in a range of applications — from single speakers in hotel bathrooms to large, multiroom distributed audio systems and even home theaters,” Ravat said.
Lithe Audio’s in-ceiling speakers feature woven glass fiber woofer cones, titanium tweeters, and Class D amplifiers pre-tuned for in-ceiling use, while Alexa and OK Google support provides convenient voice control.
The company’s Bluetooth 5.0 Ceiling Speaker offers a single-room solution for streaming
music in kitchens, bathrooms, and hotel rooms, while its Wi-Fi Multiroom Ceiling Speaker adds built-in support for AirPlay 2 and Chromecast for the creation of distributed audio systems in the home. The speaker is available with drivers for integration into Control4 and fibaro control systems, with support for additional manufacturers coming soon.
At the top of Lithe Audio’s ceiling speaker line is the Pro Series Wi-Fi Multi-Room Ceiling Speaker for residential installations. The Pro Series offers all the same features as the Wi-Fi speaker while adding support for full highresolution audio at 192 kHz, 24 bits; an optical input; and two Ethernet ports — one for a hard-
wired network connection and one for daisy-chaining another speaker.
For additional functionality, the Pro Series is available with PoE++ and WiSA Bolt-on modules. The PoE++ Bolt-On adds PoE capabilities that deliver up to 70W to each speaker, while the WiSA Bolt-On allows integrators to easily incorporate the speaker into wireless Dolby 5.1, Dolby 7.1, and Dolby Atmos surround-sound home theater systems. To add extra bass, the 70W Wi-Fi Multi-Room Micro Subwoofer — small enough to fit on a bookcase, under a bed, or behind a couch — can be wirelessly connected to Lithe Audio’s Wi-Fi ceiling speakers.
For areas that require high-end audio quality but can’t accommodate a traditional ceiling speaker, Lithe Audio’s new IO1 speaker offers the same technology as the company’s Wi-Fi Multi-Room Ceiling Speaker but can be installed in a number of configurations — including vertically or horizontally on walls, flush-mount in corners, mounted on a yard stake, and more — to meet the needs of any indoor or outdoor space.
The new IO1 will be introduced at CEDIA Expo 2022 and is planned for release in the first quarter of 2023. For audio streaming in outdoor areas all year long, the company’s waterproof, IP56-rated Bluetooth Garden Rock Speaker is designed to withstand the elements while blending in seamlessly with landscaping.
Lithe Audio is represented in the U.S. market by The BIG Corp, a global, full-service consumer electronics sales rep firm and consulting agency. x
By Jeremy Glowacki
Eric Crawford says that he tends to be obsessive about many things. At the top of his list is creating the most efficient processes for serving smart home clients in the Treasure Valley region of Idaho. As the owner of The Loop, a custom integration firm in Boise, ID, Crawford is committed to finding the best ways to design, install, and service integrated home systems. But he also knows when to turn off from the day to day and tune in to valuable family time while on vacation. When we reached out to him recently, Crawford was on one of these vacations, doing a “digital detox,” completely disconnected from tech for 11 days. That’s where today’s conversation starts, but then we learn so much more about Crawford’s unique path from an early career in product engineering, launching The Loop, and developing systems that strive for the best service in the business. This portion of the interview, excerpted from Episode 102 of the Residential Tech Talks podcast, has been edited for length and clarity.
Residential Tech Today: When we reached out to you recently, you were on a “digital detox.” For the owner of a tech-focused business, it can’t be easy to disconnect like that. When did you figure out you needed a complete break from your phone, etc., and how were you able to pull that off?
Eric Crawford: I tend to be quite committed to everything in my life. Some use the term obsessive [laughs]. I’m very involved in everything in my life, whether it’s with my wife of 19 years, with our three children, or with work or a hobby. They always tend to be pretty intense for me. And I started to realize that with The Loop, one of the difficult things that all owners of integration firms face is that we work from maybe 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., but then our clients typically get home around 6:00 p.m., and
then that’s when they start having questions. As we owners fade out from hands-on business activity to support roles, we start taking on this evening-time commitment. Depending on how many time zones we support, in some cases these calls are going late into the evening or early morning. I started to realize that when I was trying to vacation with my three kids and wife that I wasn’t really getting any type of recharge. I heard from a business coach that having your emails actually just disappear is healthier. Imagine coming back to an inbox that doesn’t have eight days of emails backed up. In reality, the email from seven days ago is either not important anymore, or someone else in your organization has already addressed the issue. And if it hasn’t been, then most likely that person will reach out again when you’re back. So, now I go on these digital detox vacations. In my Outlook, I have a rule set up that basically says, “I’m disconnecting for X number of days. Your emails will be permanently deleted. If this is an important matter, here are the people you can contact. If you want to reach me specifically, resend your email after this date, and then I will have access to it.”
RT Today: You’re not really like the typical person who comes up through this tech space and becomes an integrator. What was your path to get where you are today?
Great question. As a child, I typically did well with what I refer to as multivariable problems, situations where something didn’t work, but it, you couldn’t specifically pinpoint what that was. So, you had a lot of different things interacting, so that mechanism didn’t work. I just seemed to be able to figure out when there were all these different things interacting, what the root cause was and how to solve the problem. In high school, people said I should become an engineer, so I went off to college and got a
manufacturing engineering degree. I worked in that field for about 10 years, and then was just ready to make a change. I left engineering and started The Loop here in Boise. What I noticed when I first got into the business was that this industry really isn’t about the product. We are a service business at the core. That’s why I started structuring The Loop around how to deliver a service experience.
RT Today: How did your experience as an engineer help you make a plan?
I took my experience as an engineer and my experience in process development to really refine how do we deliver a consistent experience when we’re combining 15 different vendors and 30 different manufacturers and third-party contractors and builders and designers and all these individuals to try and create a consistent experience for the client. I think one thing that’s unique about The Loop is that we are a very operations-focused company. That’s my passion — looking at systems that are broken and figuring out how to optimize by optimizing our system to decrease our costs. I would much rather sell the exact same amount of stuff and
make more money by optimizing what we do versus going out and trying to find 10% more work to make more money.
RT Today: Once you moved to Boise and opened The Loop, how did you establish yourself in the community?
I reached out to builders. I started to talk with every neighbor, introducing myself and talking about the company. I would talk with people in the Home Depot parking lot. I would hand out business cards to people in Costco that were buying a TV and go, “Hey, if you need that TV hung, I can help you out.” I was every place I could find. I would go to the building associations and the Chamber of Commerce meetings and everything, just trying to meet people. I took on this project for about $24,000. I thought for sure that was the biggest project in the history of Idaho and that no one would ever spend more than $24,000. That was kind of the start of really realizing, okay, this industry is far, far bigger even in Idaho than I ever imagined.
I would say yes, but we try to avoid the words “service contract” because our clients see them as extended warranties, which they don’t like. Our clients really operate at a different level than people like me. Whereas I’m very conscious about where I spend my money, the vast majority of our clients are at an income level where, I would argue, $10,000 one way or the other is not that significant to them. What’s far more significant is their time, stability, and ability to get to work on time. With that in mind, all of our designs include our Loop ProCare for the first year. That covers service calls, software updates, device replacements, all these things that our clients are looking for. Then, by about month 11, we go through and pull a report from our ticketing system and go, “Okay, Mrs. Jones, here’s everything we’ve done for you over the past 11 months at zero charge. If you want to renew, then it’s $59 or $99 a month. What would you like to do?” It also helps keep us in check to make sure we are really delivering on what we’re supposed to as part of that first year of support.
RT Today: I know you’ve taught about these service strategies at CEDIA Expo. Are you teaching again this year in Dallas?
I am not doing any classes this year because I’ll actually be exhibiting. We have a product that we’re bringing to market, so we’re really excited. It’s a separate company from The Loop that we have called IFP Connect [see p. 82]. It’s an integrated fiber platform that enables you to distribute data throughout a building all via fiber. Although I won’t be teaching this year, I’ll probably be back for 2023 teaching again because I do thoroughly love helping other integrators anyway that I can. x
Imagine a home that exists simultaneously in the real world and the metaverse, one where you can seamlessly move from one version of reality to the other, entertaining friends and business associates in person or as avatars.
Such a home would solve many challenges related to space and time. How do you get together with friends who are scattered around the country or around the world? How do you meet socially with business associates from Europe, Asia, and Africa?
And how do you socialize virtually without — let’s be honest here — the two-dimensional dreariness of one more video call?
“It’s just another step in an evolution that has been going on for many years now,” said Gabe Sierra, director of operations for luxury home builder Sierra Development and founder of meta real estate developer MetaResidence One. “The Sandbox, as a virtual world and a gaming platform, allows us to build immersive experiences that people around the world can visit and enjoy.”
Yet like any property, this MetaReal house needs lights, shades, audio, video, heating and air conditioning systems, and some way to control and automate them. That’s where Crestron, integrator Think Simple, and the Bodhi building management platform come together.
Real and MetaReal Sierra says the MetaReal house is the culmination of a lifetime of experiences.
“My dad’s been a general contractor for 30 years,” he noted. “I’ve spent my entire life on jobsites.”
After finishing a degree in construction management, he worked at three large construction companies before rejoining his father’s firm. Along the way, he developed a strong connection to the virtual world through his interests in video games, cryptocurrency, and NFT art.
“My original idea was to offer a home through an online auction, with a single click on the Ethereum blockchain.” To that end, he teamed up with ONE Sotheby’s International Realty.
“Long term, this type of purchase will simplify real estate transactions, in the same way that crypto gives you more control of your money,” Sierra said.
In today’s reality, there were a number of legal issues that the team had to work out, but with that accomplished, the buyer and future owners will have the right to resell the home using the same simple process.
As the idea grew, Sierra realized that the real
value was more than the transaction — that someone interested in buying a house on the blockchain would be very interested in having a metaverse experience as part of his or her home.
“And because it’s the first of its kind, it will be a landmark and a part of history,” he explained.
“So, you, if you’re the buyer, will have an asset with millions of eyes on it, and you will be able to leverage those eyes in any number of ways beyond simply hosting events. You’ll get a fully built-out experience that you can market and change as you wish, and you’ll have a real-world asset that backs up everything you do.”
Both homes are under construction right now, with an auction planned for March or April of 2023.
One part of Sierra’s vision is to build a physical home that’s above and beyond the ordinary.
The real-world house, designed by architect Mark Reardon of Palmetto Bay, FL, will be an 11,000-square foot single-level mansion with seven bedrooms, nine baths, contemporary oakpaneled kitchen, family and entertainment areas, plus an outdoor pool, garden, and spa. It will be located in the Village of Pinecrest, just south of Miami and close to Biscayne Bay.
The metaverse house, designed by Voxel Architects, will include an exact duplicate of the physical home plus several additional spaces, including a multi-level nightclub in the basement. (There will be other spaces that Sierra has not yet revealed.)
A fun feature is a Lamborghini customized by Ocean Auto Club of Coral Gables, FL, that exists in both the real world and the metaverse. If bidding reaches a certain price level, Sierra says, he will include it with the house.
Sierra says that it was his determination to build the best possible experience that led him to Crestron, and through them, to Think Simple.
“I’m building a house for someone who is very interested in technology, and so I need the very best technology for that house,” he offered. “That’s where Crestron and Think Simple will take us.”
Will Gilbert, partner at Think Simple explained that his company is “designing a home that will include a complete Crestron automation system, including whole-house
Crucially, the home will include the Bodhi building management platform, which will allow simplified real-time monitoring and scheduling of the home’s Crestron systems and, through them, nearly all of the technology installed in the home via a simple, browserbased interface. Bodhi also offers some unique features of its own, such as leak and flood detection, which is a real value in a semi-tropical climate where mold can be a major issue.
One of Bodhi’s most powerful benefits is its predictive maintenance feature, which will compare real-time data from the home’s HVAC, lighting, and audio/video systems with their manufacturers’ specifications and actual performance over time.
For example, if Bodhi sees a rise in the current
drawn by the HVAC system, it will send a notification to the HVAC contractor and open a service ticket. It also gives the technology integrator, and other contractors with proper authorization, the ability to remotely monitor and control the home’s various systems in real time.
“In this way, Bodhi dramatically improves the reliability of the home’s systems, and with that our ability to satisfy the homeowner,” Gilbert explained. “It’s truly a win-win for the homeowner and the technology integrator.”
That, Gilbert concluded, is the challenge and the joy of the integration business. “Sometimes you have to push the boundaries to achieve something extraordinary,” he said.
Pushing boundaries is what the MetaReal house is all about. x
The latest advancements in lighting technologies give the average homeowner access to new categories of integration and automation that in the past were only reserved for luxury residences. Now, by blending fixture-level control with whole-home programmability, customers are able to both enjoy a better standard of living and enhance everyday experiences.
As customized lighting solutions for clients move beyond lighting switches and dimming controls, integrators are faced with a major opportunity and a new market. However, these new opportunities also present challenges for integrators who need to learn how to navigate evolving design standards and approach client education.
Integrators must keep up with evolving design
standards and homeowner expectations to stay current. By offering customers more options, colors, and styles to meet the requests of a wider range of interior designers, architects, and clients, integrators are able to stay ahead of the curve. In addition to lighting controls, light fixtures have evolved from lamps and ceiling fixtures to LED strip lights that can be shaped and placed virtually anywhere, presenting a whole new dimension of integration and color control.
Thoughtful changes in the intensity and color temperature of lighting makes a big difference for customers who spend more time at home than ever before, both for work and entertaining. Color-tunable lighting can illuminate spaces in brighter, cooler tones during the day and change to a more subdued amber environment in the evening to provide a more relaxed and tranquil ambience. With
intelligent scheduling and automation, lighting can automatically warm and cool throughout the day to align with the natural lighting outside.
Previously, it was easy for homeowners to skip over lighting when it came to home and interior design. Simple on/off light switches are one of the most familiar and oldest home technologies, having kept the same basic design and function for more than 100 years. But now, especially in the last few years, lighting and lighting control have come a long way with the availability of voice control, trigger-based illumination, scheduled automation, tunable colored LED bulbs and fixtures, and direct coordination with security systems.
Homeowners tend to be cautious of installing overly complicated and bulky lighting technology in their homes that might not have
An intelligent, versatile smart home system that proactively controls the lights, unifies the entire home and its devices and supports a healthier home. Use Orro as a simple control system or as part of a larger control system, such as Control4, RTI or Alarm.com
BRANDS
the aesthetic appearance of other technology. For example, a customer may be hesitant to put multiple on/off light switches in an open plan living space until they learn how it can be controlled through a simple multi-button keypad featuring custom-engraved buttons. Not only is the keypad more attractive, but each button provides a range of functions, including simple on/off and dimming control of individual lights as well as one-touch control of multiple lights preconfigured to the customer’s preferred light levels.
In showrooms, pre-programmed lighting scenes are still one of the easiest and most impactful demonstrations. Homeowners are impressed by the synchronized ramping and the perfected presets and can easily imagine how lighting scenes would enhance their everyday needs and tasks, from relaxing and entertaining, to dining and cleaning, each with specific colors, lighting levels, and use of fixtures.
In addition to brightness control, integrators can also offer a wide range of advanced
capabilities that elevate everyday experiences at home for clients and their families. Integrators can enhance experiences further by adding voice control, scheduled automation, trigger-based illumination, tuneable colored LED bulbs and fixtures, and direct integration with security systems.
Current building trends and consumer tastes are moving toward increased adoption of ultraefficient, better quality, whole-home LED lighting in more spaces. At the same time, the ease of use and reliability of lighting solutions, including full control through mobile device apps, will bring permanent changes, including elevated consumer expectations of how home lighting is used and controlled to create specific scenes, moods, and environments.
Technology integrators are the best and most trustworthy resource for homeowners, designers and architects on how lighting technology can be best layered, integrated and controlled in the home. Looking ahead, further innovation in lighting hardware and control software will only strengthen this position of expertise in the long-term. Working together, clients will enjoy lighting solutions that build a deeper and more rewarding emotional connection for their home environment.
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The
The
Connectivity is king in the smart home. Without it, intelligent light switches, electronic door locks, thermostats, AV equipment, computing devices, and other smart components aren’t smart at all. They struggle to pick up commands launched by smartphones, keypads, and handheld remotes; they miss important updates from the cloud; they become a source of frustration rather than simplicity and convenience.
Today, most households rely solely on stable, reliable Wi-Fi networks to keep smart devices communicating and operating optimally, but this may soon change.
As the number of Wi-Fi-enabled devices inside and IoT devices outside homes continues to grow, the traffic on Wi-Fi networks becomes increasingly congested and signals get jammed. Cellular networks can help lighten the load. Traditionally used for texting and talking via smartphone, cellular technology is quickly gaining ground in data throughput, positioning it as a very viable adjunct connectivity method for smart home applications.
Manufacturers of smart home devices have already begun to adopt a hybrid approach with solutions that support connectivity via Wi-Fi and cellular signals. Especially for security systems and other life and home safety products, having a reliable connection point like cellular is imperative for times when Wi-Fi service is lagging or offline.
Cellular offers several other advantages to smart home environments: For starters, households don’t need anything special, other than a smartphone and a service contract, to get cellular. It’s always there, always available, and now that apps are one of the most popular ways
to interact with smart home devices, cellular networks are a natural fit as a communications platform for smart home applications. Plus, with cellular, there are no log-in passwords or codes to remember or enter. Service and connections are seamless and transparent, making cellular
connectivity extremely intuitive and userfriendly. As with any home tech product, the easier it is to use, the more enjoyable and beneficial it is to one’s lifestyle.
There’s just one hitch: Like Wi-Fi, cellular signals often fall short when it comes to
maintaining strength and coverage inside a home. The mere construction materials of a home — concrete, metal sheeting, low-E windows, in particular, can impede cellular reception. This can render the signal weak or non-existent in certain areas of the home, making it difficult to not only talk and text but monitor and control smart home equipment. Although 5G promises great things in terms of data throughput, it still won’t cut through the obstacles that already hinder cell service inside the home.
Thankfully, a cellular booster can resolve these connectivity issues, as well as any communications snags households encounter with their smartphones. Just as Wi-Fi extenders are a familiar accessory to enhance Wi-Fi connectivity, so too will cell boosters as IoT and cloud-based monitoring continues to build momentum. Consumers can benefit from boosters now to get the bars they need to talk and text via cell; they also need those bars to
monitor surveillance cameras, control electronic door locks, receive and respond to notifications from their alarm system, and more.
A strong cellular signal also enables devices inside smart homes to reliably connect with IoT devices outside the home, like cloud-based servers. This is important as the cloud continues to gain acceptance as a safe, secure, and simple way to route software updates, facilitate remote monitoring, and store and provide access to images captured by security cameras, for example.
As with any home technology, user friendliness, ease of installation, reliable performance, and cosmetic appeal is key to consumer adoption. A cellular booster that checks off each box offers homeowners a compelling addition to their living environments. Preconfigured kits that include everything needed to install and use a cellular booster resonate with smart home users who
don’t have the time or inclination to piecemeal a system together. These consumer-friendly, turnkey kits include an outdoor antenna that captures the cellular signal from the nearest tower, coaxial cabling that carries the outdoor signal inside, a booster that receives the incoming signal and amplifies it, and a distribution antenna that spreads the enhanced signal throughout the home.
Given that the size of homes and the communications demands of households vary widely, most manufacturers of cellular boosters offer a range of products from which to choose. Kits are simple enough for DIYers to install, but for those who would rather not climb a ladder and mount antennas, professional installation by a pre-qualified integrator is available. No matter which cellular booster kit you buy or how you get it installed, it’s a wise investment for the communications and control needs of your home now and in the future.
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There have been a lot of stories in the news lately about the “megadrought” the western U.S. is currently facing. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, as of April 4, 2022, 67% of the U.S. is facing some level of drought conditions and 94% of the Western U.S. is in some level of drought with 37% of the Western U.S. experiencing extreme or exceptional drought conditions.
With rising temperatures in the U.S. and around the world, these drought conditions are not expected to change anytime soon. With this in mind, I thought it timely to look at how smart home technology can help people save water.
Water leaks in a home waste a tremendous amount of water. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the average household’s leaks can account for more than 10,000 gallons of water wasted every year, or the amount of water needed to wash 270 loads of laundry. Household leaks can waste more than 1 trillion gallons annually nationwide. That’s equal to the annual household water use of more than 11 million homes.
I’ve written quite a bit about smart home technology that can help homeowners detect leaks in their homes. However, those articles were primarily focused on the amount of damage a water leak can cause in a home,
along with the cost of making repairs. Two leading water leak detection products are the Phyn Plus Smart Water Assistant + Shutoff and the Flo Smart Water Monitor and Shutoff.
Both of these products can detect very small leaks in a home, shut off the water supply to the home to minimize damage, and provide information on the water used by different fixtures or appliances in a home.
So, using one of these products you can see how much water was used by your dishwasher, when you took a shower, when you flushed a toilet, and more. These products allow family members to understand the consequences of their actions — such as the amount of water used when relaxing in a 20-minute shower or when washing dishes by hand versus using the dishwasher.
According to the EPA, nationwide, landscape irrigation is estimated to account for nearly onethird of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day. In addition, some experts estimate that as much as 50 % of water used for irrigation is wasted due to evaporation, wind, or runoff caused by inefficient irrigation methods and systems.
One way to minimize the water used to irrigate lawns and gardens is to use a smart irrigation controller. Smart irrigation controllers are available from Rachio, Wyze, Hunter, Rain Bird, and others.
Smart irrigation controllers offer a wide range of features to minimize the amount of water needed for irrigation. Some of their features include the use of local weather data to decide when to water a lawn versus when the soil has enough moisture to support a healthy lawn and other plantings. They also include automatically skipping watering when it is raining or windy, scheduling watering at times of day that minimize water lost due to evaporation and the ability to detect leaks in your irrigation system. As well, seasonal adjustment of the amount of water applied to a lawn are made, so more water can be applied during the hot summer and less during the cooler spring and fall.
Rachio, for example, states that its users see up to 30-50% savings on their monthly watering bills and have helped saved more than 30 billion gallons of water.
The plumbing system in a traditional home uses a centrally located water heater to supply hot water to all the plumbing fixtures in the home. So, if you want to take a hot shower you have to pour all the cold water located in the pipes, between the water heater and shower, down the drain before hot water reaches your shower. This can waste a significant amount of water. In fact, according to an article in Rise, you could be wasting upwards of three gallons of water each time you take a shower while you wait for hot water. So, if each member of a family of four takes a shower each day, over four thousand gallons of water will be wasted each year. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to solve this problem.
The first solution is to install an on-demand, or tankless, water heater near the shower. An ondemand water heater doesn’t heat hot water and store it in an insulated tank. Instead, it senses when a hot water fixture is opened, such as turning on a shower, or starting a washing machine to clean a load of clothes, and only then starts heating water. The water heater heats the water as it flows to where it is needed in a home.
An on-demand water heater can either be centrally located to supply water for the entire home or smaller units can be located where hot water is used — including bathrooms, the kitchen, etc. By locating a small on-demand water heater in a bathroom, the amount of water that is wasted, for example, while waiting for hot water to reach the shower, is greatly reduced.
On-demand water heaters can be powered by either natural gas or electricity. Gas-powered models are typically used to supply hot water for an entire home, while smaller electrical units are usually located near where hot water is used in a home. It is best to consult a qualified plumber before purchasing an on-demand water heater
to assist in sizing the unit, so it has the capacity to heat water at a fast-enough rate to meet the demand of the fixtures that it services.
A recirculation pump is another solution to minimizing the amount of water wasted while waiting for hot water. And, just like an ondemand water heater, there are both centralized pumps as well as pumps that can be located near where hot water is used in a home.
Large homes, where hot water could take an extensive amount of time to reach plumbing fixtures, are typically designed to use a recirculation system. In this case, a centrally located pump takes water out of a tank-style water heater, continuously circulates it in the hot water pipes in the home, and hot water that isn’t used is put back into the water heater’s storage tank. This minimizes the waste of water, but it does waste energy as the hot water will cool as it travels around the home and will need some degree of reheating when it comes back to the water heater. Typically, these recirculation pumps will include timers so they only operate
at times when homeowners will typically use hot water.
A second kind of hot water recirculation pump can be located at a plumbing fixture that is farthest from the centrally located water heater. Instead of circulating hot water through a specially designed network of pipes, the recirculation pump will pump water from the hot water line into the cold-water line until hot water reaches the pump. This kind of recirculation system can either operate automatically or manually.
The automatic recirculation pump senses when the water in the hot water pipes has cooled and will automatically pump hot water into the cold-water line until hot water reaches the pump and is ready for use.
As for the manual system, when someone wants hot water, they trigger the pump and only then does it pump water from the hot water line into the cold water line. Again, the pump will operate until it senses that hot water has reached
“I’m impressed with how HTSN is thinking about education. And not just training their own teams and dealers, but spreading the word about our industry to help recruit new talent.”
Educating integrators across the country on the latest technology and business best practices.
We’re more than just a buying group.
Want to learn more? Contact Hank Alexander, director of HTSN, at hank.alexander@nationwidegroup.org.
the pump and is ready to be used at any fixture between the pump and the water heater. Typically, these recirculation pumps are triggered by either a wall-mounted switch or a small, wireless, remote control.
The advantage of locating the recirculation pump at the location of the plumbing fixture that is farthest from the water heater is that it doesn’t require a specialized plumbing design and can be retrofit into any home.
In a ranch home where the two ends of the house can be quite a distance from a centrally located water heater, two recirculation pumps could be installed — one at either end of the home. The disadvantage of this system is that pumping water from the hot water line into the cold-water line can cause the cold water coming from a faucet for drinking to be tepid.
One solution is the Chilipepper CP9000 hot water recirculation pump, which can be integrated into a smart home, including the ability to trigger the pump using voice commands.
Another way to reduce the amount of water you use it to recycle a portion of your wastewater — referred to as gray water. Gray water is defined as “household wastewater (as from a sink or bath) that does not contain serious contaminants (as from toilets or diapers).” Treated gray water can be reused in toilets, clothes washing, irrigation, and topping off a swimming pool.
Hydraloop is a gray water recycling system announced at CES in 2020. The way it works is that wastewater is routed from showers, tubs, your clothes washer, and water drainage from an air conditioning or heat pump system to the Hydraloop system. The wastewater is then cleaned, similar to technologies used in wastewater treatment plants.
Competing systems typically use filters or
you take a shower. A family of four where each person takes one shower per day can save almost 6,000 gallons of water per year.
Another simple change is replacing an old toilet with a WaterSense-labeled toilet, which can, according to the EPA, save the average family nearly 13,000 gallons of water per year.
membranes that require ongoing maintenance to clean wastewater. Hydraloop combines six different technologies to clean the gray water produced in a home: sedimentation, floatation, dissolved air floatation, foam fractionation, an aerobic bioreactor, and disinfection of the cleaned water with powerful UV light. Hydraloop estimates that a family of four can save 20,000 gallons of water each year using one of their systems.
Obviously, a Hydraloop, or any gray water recycling system, is going to require significant changes to the standard plumbing layout in a home. A Hydraloop system is also about the size of a refrigerator so additional planning is needed when considering installation into an existing home.
There are also a number of inexpensive and low-tech changes you can make to a home to save water.
For example, installing a low-flow shower head is an inexpensive change that can save a significant amount of water. WaterSense is an EPA program that helps consumers find water efficient products. According to the EPA, replacing showerheads with WaterSense-labeled models can save four gallons of water every time
An Altered Extreme Water Saving Nozzle is another inexpensive option that can best be described as a faucet aerator on steroids. The Altered Nozzle produces a fine mist of water droplets. These droplets do a good job of, for example, applying water to your hands when washing them, but it uses 98% less water than the flow from the faucet without the Altered Nozzle. A simple twist of the nozzle changes it to spray mode that can be used to, for example, rinse your toothbrush. And, even in spray mode, you use 85% less water.
Lastly, a ShoweStart TSV minimizes the water wasted while waiting for hot water to reach a shower. The ShowerStart TSV monitors the flow of cold water from a showerhead. Once the water reaches 95 degrees Fahrenheit, the ShowerStart automatically lowers the flow of water to a trickle. Once you get into the shower, you simply pull the attached cord to resume the normal flow of water. The ShowerStart TSV allows you to save water and simplify your routine. You can start your shower and brush your teeth or get your clothes ready for work, while minimizing the amount of water you waste getting hot water to your shower.
Clean water is becoming an increasingly precious resource. Technology offers both hightech and simple solutions to minimize the water used in a home. Individual homeowners can make simple changes that can save thousands of gallons of water each year. If these changes were made on a nationwide basis the savings would be well over 100 billion gallons of water each year. x
South Florida Home is Modest in Size, But Massive in Wi-Fi Connectivity and Networking Needs
By Lisa MontgomeryFor an extensively remodeled 2,800-squarefoot house in Key Largo, FL, a high performing, enterprise-grade network solution was the only way to go. Why? This house may be modest in size, but it’s big in technology thanks to the professional integration from The Premier Group based in Carmel, IN.
HIGH-TECH ON THE Waterfront Photography by Maritza Thibos Photography
“We installed every technology imaginable into this residence, to the tune of about $700,000,” noted Premier’s CEO Jason Barth. “The sheer magnitude of the smart systems consistently operating on all cylinders was something no ordinary networking system could handle. The music system alone plays non-stop indoors and outdoors. Dead zones were not an option.”
Given the heavy Wi-Fi load on the home’s network, The Premier Group set up separate VLANs to segment and streamline the hardwired network and Wi-Fi traffic.
Multiple mobile devices, computers, security cameras, motorized window shades and hurricane shutters, lights, thermostats, smart TVs, whole-house audio, and a home control system all compete for precious Wi-Fi bandwidth. Without it, devices would struggle to find a strong Wi-Fi signal, rendering them unmanageable and inoperable. Listening to music, enjoying a movie, and controlling the shades, lights and other devices would become more of a chore than a convenience.
Based on these potential problems, the homeowner willingly invested in a stable, reliable networking foundation to deliver the bandwidth, coverage, and speed necessary for all the tech the owners love so much to operate as it should.
“The Custom Core system from Access Networks checked off every box for the advanced networking needs and expectations of savvy technology users like these,” Barth explained. “It can handle huge bandwidth demands without a hitch, is failsafe, can be customized precisely to their specific requirements, and can be easily updated to support new devices and applications.”
For this project, one of the primary demands was “handing off” the network to The Premier Group. Per the request of the client, The Premier Group would manage and monitor the network and every device connected to it remotely from their headquarters in Indiana.
“She wanted the peace of mind that if anything went wrong, we’d be there to fix it, even though we’re located hundreds of miles away,” Barth pointed out.
Through the remote management capabilities of the Custom Core platform, technicians have full visibility and insight into the network. Should a device fall offline, for example, the Custom Core system notifies The Premier Group or the service team at Access Networks if it’s after hours. So far, there’s been nothing to fix but having the assurance of immediate remediation is priceless to the homeowners.
Remote monitoring, management, and resolution are vital to the functionality of the elegant, well-appointed home and the business efficiency and opportunity at The Premier
Group. “Before using Access Networks, we refrained from jobs located outside our region,” Barth said. “As this project proves, we can provide exceptional service to clients no matter where they live, which gives us the confidence to work with clients throughout the country.”
This ultra-efficient mode of tech service can only happen if the networking system has been properly configured. Based on information gathered by The Premier Group — home size, construction materials, layout, number and type of connected device, and user preferences — the design experts at Access Networks set up the Core System and shipped the appropriate router, switches, and access points directly to the jobsite. They also provided The Premier Group with a networking roadmap indicating the ideal placement of each of the four recommended access points to combat Wi-Fi obstacles like the home’s concrete and glass construction.
“From here, installation of the network is nearly a plug-and-play process,” Barth said. “We had the network installed, validated, and fully operational by the second day on-site.”
Given the heavy Wi-Fi load on this particular network, however, The Premier Group went several steps further, setting up separate VLANs to segment and streamline the hardwired network and Wi-Fi traffic. This prevents bandwidth-intensive activities, like downloading high-res video, from monopolizing the network, which can impede the performance of other Wi-Fi devices. With security devices, AV equipment, and control and automation components each utilizing their own separate VLANs, the homeowners are assured that every component on the network has the bandwidth it needs.
VLANs also help protect the homeowners’ privacy. Per settings programmed into the Core System by The Premier Group, guests who connect to the network can access only certain devices, like the whole-house music system. The owners’ personal computers and security devices are off-limits. It’s the ideal scenario for now. However, plans are underway to add a third VLAN for business colleagues who regularly conduct meetings at the residence.
“This is one of the greatest benefits of an enterprise-grade network,” Barth explained. “We can easily customize it for business-like applications. In this case, we’ll create a ‘glorified guest VLAN’ to grant users access to smart TVs to stream presentations from laptop computers and to printers.”
Barth expects other modifications to the network going forward. “Home networks are no longer a set-it-and-forget-it type of amenity like they used to be,” he explained. “Like most home technologies, networking systems are constantly evolving with new features and security protocols to keep the system fresh, relevant, and protected against increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats. It’s important to us and our clients that their network is always on point with the current Wi-Fi standards and safeguards.”
It’s also important the network keeps pace with the owner’s insatiable appetite for new technology. “The owner loves tech, loves the comfort, enjoyment, and conveniences it delivers, so we expect him to continually update and upgrade,” Barth says.
Remodeling and redecorating can sometimes throw a monkey wrench into Wi-Fi performance, as well. But no matter what happens at this smart, automated custom home, there’s a networking infrastructure to support it. x
Multiple mobile devices, computers, security cameras, motorized window shades and hurricane shutters, lights, thermostats, smart TVs, whole-house audio, and a home control system all compete for precious Wi-Fi bandwidth.
Deontay Wilder has experienced many highs and a few lows in professional boxing. Although his career has made him a materially wealthy and famous person, he is determined to avoid the pitfalls that can come from a sport that involves repeated blows to the head and business associates who may only have their own best interests in mind.
The former WBC heavyweight champion is shrewd about these things. The 36-year-old embraces the knowledge and wisdom that comes with age, stating “unless you apply knowledge” you pick up throughout your life, you run the risk of becoming “an old fool.”
By Jeremy Glowacki
As he shares this bit of wisdom about aging foolishness, he laughs and adds, “And, I’ve known a few of those.”
Wilder says that he has learned over time that while professional boxing is a “team effort” from trainers, managers, promoters, and the boxer himself, it’s really an “individual business” once that fighter enters the ring.
“When I’m in the ring, you can’t go in there and help me,” he related. “Yes, you can help me train, and you may give me water, but you can’t help me throw punches or dodge a punch. I’m taking everything. And, while over time I may
deteriorate physically and my mind may go, the guys that have been training me and guiding me? Nothing is wrong with them. And, they’ve made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of me. As a fighter, you’ve got to be smart about all of this.”
That type of perceptiveness seems to have inspired the Tuscaloosa, AL, native to save his money wisely, investing in property in his home state, as well as in the Los Angeles area and Atlanta. He has built multiple homes to shelter his large family, looking to provide for them today, but also for his future generations, as well.
A relatively small piece of this growing investment is an elegantly appointed entertainment space in Wilder’s Glendora, CA, home that he and his fiancée, the actress and entrepreneur Telli Swift, recently collaborated on with LA-based interior designer Lisa Slayman and custom integrator Eric Thies of DSI. Together, they turned an ordinary-looking bonus space centered between second-story bedrooms into an extraordinary, modern private theater featuring professional-grade video projection, LED star ceiling, pounding audio performance, and oversized seating to accommodate Wilder’s eight children and his own 6-foot 7-inch frame.
“We had a space in our house that was centered at the top of our home, and it was just a big open area that Deontay and I wanted to turn into a theater space,” said Swift, who is founder of the Boxing WAGS Association (501c3), which is a not-for-profit company that aims to raise funds and deliver them into the hands of service providers and non-profits who support children and families in a variety of ways. “One of my mother’s friends was friends with Eric from DSI. We got in contact with him, and he got us in contact with Lisa. Then the whole process started.”
The first priorities for Wilder were accommodating all eight of his children within the theater’s seating layout, using a color palette throughout the room that featured “royal” colors, and including lighting that made the space look more exotic. As an added, personal touch, Swift asked that her fiancé’s personal logo be included somewhere in the theater’s design.
“Deontay wanted dark blue and gold colors, and he wanted his logo on the back of each of the chairs,” said Slayman, who is an ASID and IIDA accredited designer respected for her home theater expertise. “What I ended up doing was taking his logo and some of the geometry and trying to do something with the walls. You can see it’s now a dark blue silk wall covering, which is acoustically transparent. All the equipment’s behind it, but the surface has gold metal on each
panel; each of those angles were laid in separately.”
One of the technical considerations facing the design team was building a room with a room, covering up existing windows, and keeping the theater isolated from surrounding bedrooms. “Obviously, we had to close the walls and control the light,” Thies said. “We also had to get the gear out of the room and find a place for our rack.”
Decorative wall panels were created to break up the wall space and allow for speaker locations hidden behind separate framed fabric panels. The panels consisted of Aniline dyed wood veneer frames from Italy with flush inset acoustical fabric divided by quarter-inch gold reveals in an informal “art deco” pattern.
“A lot of people assume hard surfaces in a theater are bad, but you do need some hard surfaces,” Thies said. “I think one of the biggest problems with theaters is that they’re often not ‘live’ enough. They seem claustrophobic. You’re already walking into room with no windows, so you don’t want to acoustically shrink that room. You want it to feel as open as possible, and you need hard services for that. I’m glad that Lisa did not shy away from hard surfaces with this project.”
The decorative fabric allowed for acoustical backing so there was some value to reduce echoreflection from walls as they were parallel with
one another. Panels were designed to float off the walls with two-inch space behind every panel. This helped further reduce echo reflection. Slayman’s team added RGBW LED strip lights all around each panel, which resulted in each panel having a “halo” glow.
On the back wall, Slayman’s team created a bump out/air chase centered on the wall to pull cool air from a vent near the floor, behind the back row, up through the projector housing and into the attic space. It gave some interest to an otherwise flat wall. There are micro fans in the projector housing to pull heat. A framed, optical glass port was installed to limit noise from the projector and create a consistent channel for air circulation.
A perimeter room soffit was designed to conceal cabling, sprinkler pipes and ducting. It framed a recessed area to apply a “starry night” ceiling. The ceiling includes three different sizes of fiber optic lights to mimic the look of a real night sky, including a shooting star field. The panels are made from acoustical fiberglass to provide a reduction of noise reverberation. The custom star ceiling and fabric track system was supplied and installed by LBI Boyd.
Another challenge for the design team was accommodating two rows of large theater seats in a room that was not particularly long. “It
made sense for the room to do a SeymourScreen Excellence CinemaScope projection screen that maximized the width of the room but didn’t impede on sightlines,” Thies said.
DSI also did not want to “shrink the room” with the type of gear they were installing.
“We knew we would have to include isolation layers for the soundproofing, but we didn’t want to create a screen wall that’s 30 inches deep, because we just didn’t have space,” Thies said.
That meant the front sound stage of theater would need to be in-wall speakers. “We went with the highest performance products that we can get within the budget that would deliver what the clients expected for a big, punchy dynamic movie sound, yet not take up a lot of space,” Thies added.
DSI specified JBL and Revel in-wall loudspeakers and JL Audio subwoofers for the room in a Dolby Atmos configuration, with 13 speakers and dual subs, that “really move a lot of air in that space and give you a nice, nice impact and great low end.”
All of the speakers are hidden behind acoustically transparent fabric.
“There was minimal space to conceal ceiling speakers, so we blended them into the soffit by locating them in an aesthetic way to work with the gold reveals while conforming to Dolby Atmos criteria,” Slayman explained.
A Barco Balder projector lights up a 13-foot projection screen, and AudioControl handles most of the amplification and tuning, “because we were trying to get a lot of bang for the buck, and AudioControl is a great value product,” Thies noted. From a control standpoint, DSI wanted to keep things “super easy to use,” so they went with a Savant system and Savant Lighting.
The final technical consideration was the aforementioned extra-large theater seating. “We’re working with a client who is a very big man and a world-class athlete,” Thies noted. “We have to get some seats that are comfortable and could handle that big frame of his.
Fortunately, their house is probably within 15 minutes of Fortress Seating, and we took them down there and [we said], ‘Here’s our situation: We need to extend leg rests. We need to make the backs of the seat high enough to support somebody at his height, and it’s got to be super comfortable for him.’ That was not our usual type of request or technical hurdle that we have to jump.”
When Thies took Swift to the seating manufacturer, Fortress Owner Gabi Wolper mentioned his company’s custom capabilities. That’s when Telli asked, “Can you put Deontay’s logo on these seats?” according to Thies. “So, they sent us the logo, and we got it embroidered on all of the seats. We wound up doing seats for their Alabama theater, too.”
Considering the room is on a second floor, surrounded by bedrooms. Acoustical isolation was very important. LBI Boyd applied Sound Isolation Company resilient isolation clips with metal hat channels to the existing framed walls and the ceiling. They then applied half-inch plywood and two layers of 5/8-inch QuietRock 530 sound-damping gypsum board to the hat channel. The decorative finished wall fabric panels and soffit floated off the finished QuietRock surface two inches to create pockets that help diffuse sound because the walls are parallel to each other and echo reflection was a potential issue. The designers also specified a standard 1 ¾-inch thick solid core wood door with Pemko neoprene seals all around the opening, as well as an interlocking threshold for the bottom of the door.
In the end, everyone was happy with the final results. For the family, much binge-watching and horror film viewing already have taken place. “Movie nights are amazing,” Wilder recalled.
“There were some good Marvel actionpacked movies where the bass was great. When we watch a family movie with the kids, we’ve got a horror film family! Even the smallest kid loves horror movies. She says, ‘Daddy, I’m not gonna get scared.’ We’ve got a brave four-year-old!’”
For Slayman, working with an energetic and engaging couple like Deontay Wilder and Telli Swift was an enjoyable experience, as well. “It was really fun working on this project,” she said, “and I enjoyed getting to know Deontay and Telli better. The whole process was great.”
For Thies, who has worked in the homes of some of the most power people in the entertainment business, more than anything, he did not want anything to go wrong.
“In the back of your mind, you think, ‘Man, I’ve really got do a great job for this guy. He’s a heavyweight champion and a pretty intimidating fellow. I must perform!” he said, maybe only half joking.
Speaking of performing, Wilder says that he is not done with boxing, just yet. Although he might have considered hanging up his gloves after last year’s fight, it was a hometown ceremony unveiling a bronze statue saluting his many career accomplishments and contributions to his community where he
realized that too many people were looking up to him to retire right now.
“So many people came from all walks of life, from all over the world… That was amazing to see. But, also, to have grown men bring their sons up to me and break down crying while holding my hand, telling their son that I’m a real leader because of the things I’ve done… That helped me to understand that I am not finished. I can’t stop right here because so many depend on me for strength, for motivation, and for guidance. I had to apologize to my children, and say, ‘Daddy’s coming back.’ But, I’m so proud that I’ve gotten to the point where I can dictate and do what I want. The reason I’m coming back is that it’s just bigger than me.”
Deontay Wilder returns to the boxing ring for the first time in more than a year on Oct. 15, when he fights Finland’s Robert Helenius at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. x
Kaleidescape, the Mountain View, CA, manufacturer of premium movie servers and movie players, has been busy over the past two years with new hardware releases and marketing partnerships, trailblazing a new frontier for entertainment experiences in the home. Tayloe Stansbury, a longtime Kaleidescape customer before joining the company’s board, was appointed CEO in late 2020, after serving in executive roles at Watermark Insights, Intuit, and Ariba. Although his background in applied math and computer science is a less traditional route into the home theater market, his insights as a technically astute Kaleidescape enthusiast and lover of movies already have proven invaluable to the company as it charts its path into the future.
The company has focused on improving performance and scalability, discontinuing allin-one products and moving to the server and player products that have faster downloads, faster UI, and download while you play. Kaleidescape now has a line of products that deliver customers more options when it comes to storage sizes, as well. All of this, Stansbury says, leads to a much better customer experience.
Here’s what else we learned from Stansbury on the Residential Tech Talks podcast. This portion of the interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Residential Tech Today: You were a long-
time customer before joining the company. How does one go from Kaleidescape customer to chairman and CEO of the company?
Tayloe Stansbury: My journey to Kaleidescape is an unusual one. My background is in applied math and computer science. I grew up as an engineer at a number of different companies and then led engineering and product at a number of companies, including as EVP and CTO at Intuit. I became a Kaleidescape customer in 2011, when my dealer told me that I really needed to try it out. I was reluctant, so I bought the smallest one that I could. But we quickly fell in love with the device, and it spread throughout our house and to a couple of other houses. We loved the product.
I happened to be on a couple of boards of directors with people who were affiliated with movie studios. When there were titles that I would have loved to see in the Kaleidescape movie store, I called up Cheena Srinivasan, who was CEO at the time and said, “Hey can I help with some connections?” And he said, “Absolutely,” and we proceeded to get those movies into the collection.
Right around the time COVID-19 started, I called him up again and said, “How’s it going?” And he said, “Well, I’m looking for investment.” I ended up investing in the company and joining the board, and ultimately the then-chairman asked me to become CEO. So, that’s my journey
as a software guy coming to an entertainment tech company with a customer perspective, thinking about the ways in which the company had treated me as a customer that I liked and that I didn’t like. And what kinds of changes I would want to make.
RT Today: Where did you see an opportunity with your background to make an impact and to help make some changes when you took the reins there?
I've loved it since I first bought it. It is an excellent product to use, and I love movies. But coming from the mindset of an engineer there were ways to improve it from both a technical and experiential perspective. Beyond being the ultimate movie player, it is the source component for any entertainment environment. This put Kaleidescape in a position to make everything it touches perform better. Kaleidescape elevates every component in the home theater with higher-fidelity video source material, lossless audio, and integrative cues to control lighting, shading, seating, lenses, and screen masking. And we have brought all of this to the forefront with our strategic partnerships.
RT Today: Yes, over the past year you have made many moves, partnering with some of the leading brands in the industry. Tell us about those partnerships.
Kaleidescape has selected best-in-class category partners to deliver the ultimate cinematic experience. Sony (projectors & TVs),
Meyer Sound (speakers), Trinnov (surround processors), Lutron (shading & lighting), Stewart (screen masking), CINEAK (seating) and most recently, Keith Yates Design (design).
KYD has been a great partner. Nearly every theater they spec is equipped with a Kaleidescape. They understand the value of having a really high-resolution audio source that can power the rest of the theater. Kaleidescape’s uncompressed audio at the source can make all of the amplifiers and speakers and sound treatments really take advantage of the beautifully engineered design and shape of a KYD theater.
We worked with Lutron over the course of this last summer and fall to introduce direct integration with their shading and their lighting. The experience is entirely automated due to cues that are encoded as metadata into our movies, and this allows the audience to have an undistracted, seamless movie watching experience.
Our partnership with Stewart Filmscreen also takes advantage of home automation, this time with screen masking. Cues within our movies
identify aspect ratio, and the screen automatically adjusts to the right shape for a given movie. Customers who purchase select Stewart screens with masking capabilities get a discount on Kaleidescape systems. We’ve also partnered with the vanguard of projectors, Sony, and offer a discount when you buy a qualifying Sony projector or a large screen display together with a Kaleidescape.
With Trinnov and Meyer Sound, we have collaboratively curated a set of movies so that when you buy a Trinnov processor or Meyer Sound speakers together with a Kaleidescape, you get a collection of movies specifically selected to showcase the pure, matchless sound your theater is actually capable of.
For seating, we have partnered with the best in the business in CINEAK. With Kaleidescape’s ability to provide cues to CINEAK, you only have to press play and enjoy an automatically reclining seat.
So, Kaleidescape’s goal is to deliver a product that changes the landscape not only for how people enjoy entertainment but how they experience it throughout their home.
“Kaleidescape makes the industry's best movie servers and players, and we use the system for all our calibrations when we do quality control on a commissioned KYD home theater.” — Keith Yates, president and CEO, Keith Yates Design
“Kaleidescape underscores our unwavering commitment to provide the finest in 4K HDR entertainment. This ensures that our customers will get the very best from their premium Sony projector.”
— Jeff Goldstein, head of custom integrator channel sales, Sony
“I recently saw a Kaleidescape, Sony projector and Stewart Filmscreen together and it just blew me away. Just a breathtaking image – and when that gets paired with great surround sound, it's quite impressive to think about how far our industry has come to be able to deliver this kind of impact in a home.” — Adrian Silva, vice president of sales, Stewart Filmscreen
RT Today: And you have been making a lot of product updates and announcements as well, including some at CEDIA Expo 2022.
So, a ton of the focus has been in marketing and sales to promote the brand and create momentum there. At the same time, we hadn’t released new products in some time, so I thought it was important that we should get some out the door. We, in fact, got several out the door last year — some six new products, mainly new servers of different capacities and sizes. One of the changes we also made was to pivot toward an all server and player architecture for better performance and scalability.
When I was a Kaleidescape customer, I soon realized that I wanted more storage as well as another player in another room of the house. It was important that the architecture was a scalable one that you could add to as your passion for the platform grew. Some of the products we had previously put out were ones that did not scale well.
So, performance and scalability was something that I thought was important. We discontinued all-in-one products that were less performant and moved to the server and player products that are more performant, have faster downloads, faster UI and download while you play. That leads to a much better customer experience. And, what we found is that customer engagement is two and three times higher with a new product line than it had been with the old lines.
We now have a line of products that deliver customers more options when it comes to storage sizes, which is the Compact Terra movie server, available in 6 terabytes (TB), 12TB and our newly announced 22TB offering. The Compact Terra line supports up to 5 simultaneous 4K playbacks with no loss in quality. The Terra movie server stores 48TB and we just announced a new 88TB. The Terra supports multiple Strato players, and up to 10 simultaneous 4K playbacks with no loss in quality.
RT Today: Why do you think the engagement is better?
I think it’s primarily because of performance. The system is snappier. You can download movies while you’re playing movies on several different stations around the house. It’s also about scalability, because if you decide you need more space, it’s just easier to scale up server capacity with the current architecture. You can add more players throughout your house. You can have different TVs able to pick up where you left off and watch something while simultaneous playbacks are hitting the same server.
And with an audio bitrate 10x higher than typical streaming rates, Kaleidescape drastically elevates your processor, amplifiers, speakers, and room treatments. With a video bitrate 10x higher than typical streaming rates, Kaleidescape elevates your video processor, projector, and screen to produce lifelike clarity and precision. Kaleidescape has all the performance you need to deliver the best experience.
“No other source compares to Kaleidescape for providing such a versatile library with a lossless media path. With audio reproduced through Meyer Sound cinema systems, customers at home will hear exactly what the movie’s creators heard in the studio during the final mixing session.”
— Blake Vackar, residential solutions manager for Meyer Sound
“Only Kaleidescape is designed to present movies at full reference, with lossless-quality audio ensuring customers will be blown away when they hit ‘play’ and experience the power of Trinnov audio processing when matched with Kaleidescape playback.” — Jon Herron, managing director, Trinnov Audio
“ With Kaleidescape’s ability to provide cues to CINEAK, just press play and watch the control system automatically recline the seats, adjust the position of the articulating headrest, dim the lighting, and let the movie start… And when the credits begin to roll, the seats automatically readjust as the lighting slowly comes back up.”
— Alvin Hellemans, president, and founder at CINEAK
“The ability to directly couple control automation of lighting and shading with Kaleidescape’s premium entertainment platform brings a new dimension to the concept of home entertainment, providing infinite possibilities to architects and designers who work with Lutron.”
— Ben Bard, engineering director at Lutron
Minimum
Speakers and Subwoofer
The Minimal Appearance Satellite-Subwoofer in-ceiling solution is designed to provide architecturefriendly, high-resolution playback while matching 3"–4" recessed round and square lighting fixtures.
The ICS3 spiral Planar Magnetic Driver offers unmatched ultrawide dispersion, while the SUB1 subwoofer delivers unparalleled output delivering an amazing, yet interior designer appearance.
SUB1
RT Today: As you navigate the new frontier of entertainment experiences in the home, how have you positioned Kaleidescape for success?
The very first thing that I did when I joined the company was to hire a new CMO. And she’s hired a great team and started working on marketing. This goes way beyond the onslaught of marketing our partnerships. The team has been diligent in reengaging with dealers as well.
We have developed an award-winning dealer certification program. We have multiple online training courses and webinars to help dealers sell Kaleidescape. I encourage those attending CEDIA Expo to check out our live technical training sessions while at the show.
We’ve also made a number of changes and upgrades in the sales team, as well as hired manufacturing representative firms and marketing alliances like One Firefly. As part of our focused efforts to provide a customer-first approach and elevated dealer support, we’re sponsoring integrated marketing campaigns delivered by One Firefly to help key integrators
bring Kaleidescape’s premium solutions to consumers across North America.
From a content perspective, we have hired a VP of content engagement, who has been bringing Premium Video On Demand and rentals to the movie store. We have 14,000 movies in our movie store, and we have 700 movies in 4K that you cannot get on 4K Blu-ray discs. So, it’s a rich library from many movie studios, including all the Hollywood majors.
Finally, our engineering is top notch and the team has been able to bring the processing capabilities from the larger servers and repackage it in a smaller single disk drive package at a lower price point. This supersedes the all-in-one boxes that we’d had before, and with the much higher performance that we talked about earlier. The video quality is just that much crisper and that’s important for certain movies and certain scenes.
RT Today: So, Keith Yates is helping to build the movie lab there at your headquarters. Can you tell us a little bit more about what that space is all about?
For every movie that we get from the studios
in their mezzanine formats, we then encode in the format that our players will consume. The content team watches every frame of those movies to make sure that they come across clean, that there aren’t subtitle issues, channel mix ups, audio glitches or video glitches. And we’ll either fix those ourselves or go back to the studio and ask for a deeper fix. All of those movies do get reviewed, so now we will have a premium space for the team to evaluate the content and ensure we deliver the best experience to the movie store for our customers.
RT Today: To wrap up, I just wondered if now that you’re well into your role there at Kaleidescape, how has the customer experience changed for you? Are you ever in your own home theater sometimes going ‘You know, I really kind of wish we did this,’ and then you can go back and actually implement change?
Oh, sure. There’s a little bit of that. And there’s also a sense of where the product line ought to go over the course of time and what future innovation we want to drive. We’ve got a number of really cool things in the pipeline that I’m excited to bring out to market soon. x
Multi-Dwelling Units (MDUs) have many opportunities in deploying smart apartment technology, but they may underestimate the benefits of these solutions. Parks Associates research shows that more than half of MDU renters are willing to pay higher rates for apartments with smart capabilities and amenities.
It is evident that the use of smart apartment solutions in residential units is a worthwhile investment; it helps to attract desirable tenants and allows MDUs to raise rates and increase ARPU. Beyond solutions designed for tenants living in residential units, MDUs may also use IoT technology to enable new use cases and automate staff tasks, upgrade legacy systems, and gain valuable insights with regards to maintenance needs including potential water leakage and the operational status of appliances.
While IoT deployments are a worthwhile consideration, they are also oftentimes complicated, and beyond the experience of many MDUs. Things may go wrong during the process of planning, deploying, or supporting new IoT solutions. To avoid missteps, MDUs must perform careful planning and execution, aligning stakeholders, running pilot projects, and designing solutions appropriately for the built environment, as well as taking care in the vendor selection process.
Integration is a key challenge for businesses and the vendors who coordinate their technology ecosystems; interoperability is important for the unified experience. There are many players serving the smart spaces and IoT market, including many different hardware and software players. It is critical to ensure that this technology plays nicely together. In the case of software, if integrations between different components don’t already exist, they need to be written, and this work can be more expensive and time-consuming than the purchase and installation of the actual hardware.
Businesses looking to deploy solutions must also keep in mind operational efficiencies and their five-to-10-year technology roadmap. Many businesses might start with deploying IoT solutions at a single location, which can be an excellent way to evaluate the technology, estimate ROI, and gain valuable knowledge on specifics and best practices. However, businesses must be careful that the solutions they select be capable of delivering the same returns when installed at multiple facilities, in different states or countries, and that the solutions support their technology roadmap. Scalability and adaptability are essential.
The ownership and business models for internet infrastructure in MDUs are complicated. 34% of MDU property managers report offering internet-connected or smart home devices to residents in at least one property that they manage. The majority (63%) of property managers with smart home devices installed at their largest properties purchased the
devices from an internet service provider. A property might be served by a single ISP or by several. The MDU may have financial agreements with the ISP, wherein the ISP pays them for marketing and, previously, exclusivity — or the MDU might be paying the ISP to be able to offer service to their residents. Oftentimes residents contract directly with the ISP to receive service; however, some MDUs bundle the service into the cost of rent, with CPE pre-installed and internet available at move-in.
Parks Associates’ research reveals that 73% of MDU properties with smart door locks use the devices to grant access to units remotely for unaccompanied viewings, package delivery, or third-party services. MDUs must ensure that solutions are failure-resistant and that vendors are willing and able to quickly help and resolve issues. Customer service must be a top selection criterion when working with vendors. Cybersecurity must be included in the selection process, to avoid costly incidents such as ransomware attacks. Having one vendor to manage the entire process, coordinating activities and providing expert guidance, may significantly ease the workload on MDUs and provide a more seamless deployment rollout.
Keeping these best practices in mind, MDUs stand to reap the advantages of new smart apartment technologies while avoiding potential pitfalls. x
Parks Associates, in partnership with Cox Communities, recently released the industry whitepaper Doing IoT Right: Top Practices for MDUs, available as a complimentary download.
With its new Cinergy dedicated home cinema audio system, Monitor Audio is putting professional installers center stage.
The British-owned and managed brand has channeled 50 years of creating life-like sound to bring everything it knows about audio to the big screen. Cinergy’s flexibility gives theater designers and installers infinite possibilities, enabling them to deliver the extraordinary sound and refinement that luxury customers expect.
The highly adaptable system has been designed with the knowledge that no two installations are the same. Features include a modular design that rotates when required, allowing the user to easily adapt to a horizontal or vertical install. It also includes a choice of isolation and fixing methods to help achieve the exact results required. Flexible options allow for integration into stud walls, fitting onto walls, or securing to the floor.
Installers can easily rotate the mid-tweeter array on the Cinergy 100, 200, and 300, depending on whether they are vertically or horizontally installing the product. Cinergy also offers a swappable mid-tweeter pod to allow for the best of tailor-made systems. Intelligent design innovation also means that the midtweeter pod can be interchanged with the bass drivers on the Cinergy 300.
Along with integrated handles to make life easier, Cinergy features handy feet and bracket isolators to reduce vibrations, as well. Other design features include MPD high-frequency transducers and RDT II drivers.
The THX Ultra Certified line-up includes Cinergy 100, 200, 300, and Sub15, all of which incorporate a range of new features to achieve premium-quality performance.
Whether it is mounted on the wall or integrated within it, the Monitor Audio THX Certified Cinergy 100 ($3,500 retail) was designed to bring exceptional audio to any residential cinema space. It comes assembled with the recommended port bungs, which are easily removable if you want to tailor the bass response along with EQ profiles for use with Monitor Audio IA amplifiers.
Like the rest of the Cinergy range, the THX Certified Cinergy 200 ($5,500 retail) features the same slim profile and integrated wall brackets as Cinergy 100. Handy brackets make it easy to install once you have found the perfect placement. Inside, two mid-range drivers double the power handling, improve efficiency, and reduce reflections from ceilings and floors.
The biggest speaker in the range, the Monitor Audio THX Certified Cinergy 300 ($6,500 retail) uses the brand’s latest mid-range driver technology for the purest possible sound. And with a design tailored to the needs of installers, you will find it easier than ever to fit, whether mounting it in cabinet within a wall or using it as a floor stander on the ultra-stable, isolating plinth provided.
Finally, the THX Certified Cinergy Sub15 ($3,100 retail) can either be installed in the wall or used as a floor-standing unit. It is specially designed for use with Monitor Audio’s IA800-2C amplifier, with EQ profiles available to be downloaded from the Monitor Audio website. To achieve THX Certified Ultra specification, a Cinergy system will require a pair of Cinergy Sub15’s paired with at least one IA800-2C.
Cinergy will be sold to and installed by accredited professional installation companies, handpicked by Monitor Audio teams across the globe. x
As we near the end of 2022, let’s hope that we are also approaching the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. One positive sign is that the total “Work From Home” (WFH) model has gradually been shifting toward a more hybrid model that for the purposes of this article we will call “WFH 3.0/WFA.” Yes, hybrid has turned into “WFA,” or what one might call “Work from Anywhere.”
To survive in WFH 3.0 you will have to work, conference and present in a way that is equal to what we all used to do pre-COVID in person or in the office. Further, the “A” in WFA” means that you have to be able to do (almost) everything you were able to do in the office or in front of a live audience from almost anywhere. Excuses for poor connectivity and performance just won’t cut it anymore.
Don’t worry, WFH 3.0/WFA isn’t as big a lift as you might think. Having been back on the road a bit and working in a WFH 3.0 world since the early part of the year I have been able to see and experiment with products, services and concepts that have improved my own WFH/WFA experience, and hopefully they will do the same for you.
Before we start, please note that the products described below are all solid choices, and I have
tested most, if not all of them. However, the main thought here is to give you a broader overview of the things that were born during the WFH era. Use these suggestions as a starting point illustrative of what is out there and then find the best expression of what a product can or does do that best suits your needs.
The most dramatic change in the era of WFH has come from the emergence of video
discussion. It’s not always as easy as just using the camera built into to phone, tablet, or laptop. You need to see, hear, and be heard by all participants with no excuses for bad quality.
Two interesting solutions that wrap that concept up in consolidated packages come from Poly. They have upped their game into the WFH 3.0 space with two new products that might merit consideration for your home or
conferencing. Thanks to Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, and many others, just having a “conference call” is no longer enough. Everyone needs to be seen as well heard. In concert with that, we often need to share files and physical objects that pertain to the
office workspace. First is the Poly Studio P15 “video bar,” which packs everything you need for a videoconference into one package: a camera with a 4K sensor, an integrated speaker, and a multi-microphone array, all connected with a single USB cable.
The Studio P15 offers standard camera control options such as low light compensation, but AI and image control enables two other features, as well. On the video side, the camera knows to follow you to the left or right as you move within its field of view, or if others sit next to you. The camera may adjust itself to fit or you can use the Poly Lens app for control. Even better, Auto Camera Framing automatically zooms in or out to follow the speaker.
On the audio side, NoiseBlock AI and what Poly calls an Acoustic Fence acts in the opposite way that the noise cancelation in your earbuds does. It senses extraneous noise and blocks it out. That way, hopefully, the crying baby or dog barking in the background won’t be heard by others on the call. It should be noted that this feature is available in many of the more conventional headsets from many brands, so it is definitely a feature to look for regardless of product form factor or brand.
The P15 is a bit pricy with an MSRP of $499.95, but when you add up the cost of comparably capable speakers, cameras, and mics, the cost may not be as high as it seems at first glance. A caveat, however, is that the P15 is almost 17 inches wide and weighs a bit under two pounds, so using it with anything other than the largest 17-inch laptop screen is definitely not advised or recommended.
Taking things to the next step, Poly’s Studio P51 is another expression of the all-in-one concept for videoconferencing. Here, think of almost everything that the P15 does, but picture those features built right into a 21.5-inch, 1080p monitor. Also add stereo, rather than mono speakers, and a built-in edge light so you don’t need to deal with a ring light. This is definitely a WFH product unless you have a really big backpack and are certain that there is an AC outlet where you’ll be sitting. On the other hand, for about $100 more than the P15, it is an interesting option for those who don’t want to be bothered with a jumble of WFH devices and their connectivity spaghetti.
Of course, some do like the individual component approach, and that is what you will find from companies such as Logitech. Well known for their wide range of WFH products, their display at June’s InfoComm trade show showed all parts of the equation that they offer. This included a desktop sporting their on-ear headset, their Litra Glow LED light, the 4K Brio
web cam, a BT mouse and keyboard, wired and TWS wireless ear buds, and their Logi Dock. All that was missing was a larger “pro” mic and computer speakers, but don’t worry, Logitech sells those, too. (In 2018 they acquired the BLUE microphone business, well known by podcasters for their Yeti mic line.)
Again, noting that many other companies sell some or all of the products in these categories, the idea here is to show that you can have your conferencing cake and stream it, too. For example, for WFH/WFA workers, a small, but capable webcam is essential, and may easily be unclipped from a home monitor and thrown in a backpack.
As we all add more components to our WFH ecosystem, a dock is almost essential. They come in all sizes and prices, from portable to desk-centric, but the Logi Dock is a good example of what these docks do and why you might consider one. Wouldn’t it be great to pack a power supply capable of running virtually every laptop through USB-C PD, a speakerphone with six mics, two USB-A and three USB-C ports, plus an additional upstream USB-C port, both HDMI and DisplayPort that enables you to run dual monitors and BT pairing? That’s what the Logi Port and others do and do well. Given the multitude on monitors, speakers, devices that need charging, devices that need USB or BT connectivity on my own desk, using a dock such as this eliminates wire clutter and greatly increases efficiency.
Before we leave “WFH” and move over to “WHA,” there is one new product that is, while clearly a bit pricey, merits your attention in case you win the Powerball. Samsung’s new Odyssey Ark is a 55-inch, mini LED illuminated, 4K/3,840 x 2160, curved monitor with 14-bit processing, 165hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, FreeSybc Premium Pro, HDR2000, and peak brightness of 2,000 nits. With those specs, at least the $3,500 MSRP is not the only thing that is high-end or massive.
For those who want the ultimate WFH monitor that is great for gaming, workplace, and even home viewing, this is a combination of everything you might need. In addition to the features listed above, it can pivot from vertical and horizontal orientation and switch between 16:9, 21:9, and 32:9 screen ratio with a turn of the included Ark Dial controller. With the ability to show four screens or three screens,
(Top) A look at the WFH/WFA products shown by Logitech at InfoComm. Samsung’s mammoth new Odyssey Ark
depending on the orientation, after seeing this in action I found it hard to imagine an application for video displays that it could not handle. Lest one think that the emphasis on video has left the audio wanting, fear not. The Odyssey Ark has 2.2.2 sound with Dolby Atmos and 60 watts of power. All four inputs are HDMI 2.1, the is CEC for easy control from connected devices. Standard Samsung remotes may also control it.
Enough of the wish list, let’s get back to reality and bridge the gap a bit between WFH and WFA. Some useful product WFH/WFA products you might find interesting are some of the new webcams and on-ear headsets.
One the webcam side, 4K video is no longer an oddity, though it is still in the higher price ranges, and some products remain in short supply. Look for software control that lets you adjust the field of view, just as described for the P15. One of the top products in that category is the NexiGo Iris. Yes, it‘s $249, but what you get is the largest sensor around — an 8.5 MP, 1/1.8 Sony STARVIS that rivals the image quality of standard DSLR camera. AI powers zoom up to a 10x range for an uncompressed 4k@30fps or 1080p@60fps resolution delivered via HDMI. There is even a remote to make it easier to select settings.
Another 4K webcam option is the Logitech Brio. At $199.99, it has a smaller sensor than the NexiGo and smaller zoom range, but the ability to select a variety of fields of view, including 5X zoom and a wide range of software adjustments, also make this a player in the premium webcam market.
Curiously, the most innovative of the new webcams is actually lower priced than the last two mentioned. As the name suggests, AVerMedia’s PW313D DualCam does have two cameras, uniquely mounted in a unit that is not much longer than a standard webcam. The cool thing about this, however, is that while 2MP, 1920x1080@30 fps left side camera will mostly be used facing forward, it can rotate 90 degrees backward and -15 degrees forward/down. The cool part, however, is that the 5MP 2592x1944 right side camera can rotate 195 degrees backward and 19 degrees forward/down. Once you’ve loaded the free CamEngine software, you can divide the screen output to full, side-by-side, or lower right or left corner for a two-camera presentation. If you are WFH, that means those on the call can both see you and something you are working at on your desktop. For WFA, this lets the output show both you or a white board and the rest of the participants on the other side of the camera at the same time. The best part is that it is priced at $149.99, and along with the camera and access to the software, that also includes a USB-C to USB-A cable and a desktop tripod.
Finally, one product that is much more WFA than WFH. Back on the road many of us still use laptops instead of tablets, and that means you are at the mercy of a convenient AC outlet when the internal battery runs down. Yes, those pocket-sized battery backs are great for phones and most tablets, but they don’t have the power output to either charge a 65W laptop such as my Dell XPS, let alone two of them and a phone at the same time.
To the rescue there is the
HyperJuice 235W USB-C Battery Pack from Hyper. It is neither inexpensive at $249.99 nor particularly lightweight at 1.68 pounds. What you get in exchange for that financial and physical heft is a product that has two 100W USB-C ports and two more 65W USB-C Power Delivery (PD) ports running from a 27,000 mAh capacity battery.
This lets you do a mix-and-match when there aren’t outlets nearby and you are getting low on juice. You can charge both your laptop and camera and quick charge your phone the same time. Alternatively, when there is only one available outlet where you are, the 100W PD passthrough capability means that you can run three devices while simultaneously charging the battery.
As befits a product of this price, there is an OLED status indicator that shows the real-time voltage use per port as well as the current capacity remaining and the charging status.
There you have it. We’ve come a long way from the early days of Work from Home in the dark months of “stay at home” mandates. These suggestions and where they lead you will hopefully prompt you to find what works for you, regardless of where you work from. x
Automated motorized window shades are the one smart home tech product category that had always alluded me. With the exception of trying out a single motorized shade that neither integrated with an app nor could be automated to a specific schedule, this coveted category has always been on my “someday…” wish list.
Hunter Douglas, an established leader in the window coverings market, also has been gaining a foothold in the professional home integration business for the past several years, selling its diverse lineup of motorized shading products through a channel that traditionally focused on home AV, home control, and networking. But window coverings are a huge opportunity for CEDIA-type integrators because these products are problem solvers, they are aesthetically pleasing to interior designers, and with so many windows in a home, they provide a ton of revenue potential.
Hunter Douglas, by providing me with a collection of motorized shades to review in my home, would finally enable me to experience the quality of their specific technology in a realworld setting, and truly understand how their design options fit into different room scenarios. And, I would finally be able to add that missing piece of my smart home.
Improvements to PowerView Gen 3
The process of owning my own motorized shades began with an email from the folks at Hunter Douglas just prior to CEDIA Expo 2021 late last summer. It would take a while to finally all come together, but it was well worth the wait.
Along the way, I attended dealer training in
Chicago, where the first group of some of Hunter Douglas’s top installers were provided a hands-on tutorial on the company’s new PowerView Gen 3 line. That’s where I began to learn how long the company had been working to innovate its already successful motorized shading products. Changes in their product designs would make installations more efficient, and their app would be more intuitive for end users and installers. The shades also would be more scalable, enabling a single shade installation to be as easy to control as an entire house of shades. And the app or remote control’s two-way communication would offer improved range, as well, thanks to fundamental design changes.
With PowerView Gen 3, Hunter Douglas switched from the proprietary RF communication protocol used in its prior lines to the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) RF communication protocol. As a result, the PowerView app would no longer need to communicate through a hub to control shades. Instead, by using their new standards-based design, the system could communicate directly from the app to the shade, enabling greater operating range and reliability.
For installers, Gen 3 eliminated a complicated mix of hard-to-remember button sequences for programming with a much simpler app-based setup for the shades and their remote controls. As a bonus, all PowerView Gen 3 customers will be eligible for firmware updates in the future, whereas that was only possible for systems with hubs in the past.
PowerView Gen 3 still uses the company’s
familiar pebble-style remote controls, but their design has been refreshed with a softer look, with no hard edges on the buttons.
Hunter Douglas Gallery Dealer, Drapery Street, is conveniently located near my home. Owner Caryn O’Sullivan had recently installed an impressive collection of interactive displays to showcase various Hunter Douglas shades styles and colors, which helped her guide me through the various options available, asking me whether I was looking for true blackout shades or just room darkening and what else I might want from my window coverings.
I told O’Sullivan that I definitely wanted room darkening and understood that meant some light would still bleed in around the edges of the windows; blackout shades would be preferred in a home theater room, by comparison. I also wanted the shades to include “vanes” that could diffuse sunlight during the day, offer a layer of privacy in the evening, and visually match our remaining manual blinds when viewing our windows from the outside the house. And, due to the retrofit nature of my installation, I would need them to be battery powered.
O’Sullivan helped me choose a Silhouette design, which is where soft horizontal fabric vanes float between a front and back sheer to enable multiple combinations of light control, privacy, and view-through. I complicated the order a bit with my desire to include room darkening, but Hunter Douglas has a great solution for that request. A room darkening shade requires a second, thicker shade layer,
which impressively fits on the same motor and same tube, as the Silhouette vanes. This resulting shade combination is officially called “Silhouette/Duolite” in the Hunter Douglas PowerView Gen 3 line. O’Sullivan showed me some color samples but told me that it would make more sense to have a sample book sent to my home, where my wife and I could view various color and opacity options in the rooms where the shades would be installed.
Initially, Stephenson agreed to a generous selection of four demo shades, which would cover the two front-facing bedroom windows of our house. After some further discussion of what that would look like and how it might affect the overall aesthetics of my house, Stephenson agreed to add two more windows to the order, evening out the look from outside of the upstairs windows of my house, as well as a tricky over-the-bathtub window shade in the master bedroom suite.
Before the final order was placed, Stephenson sent a local Hunter Douglas Installation Specialist (HDIS) named Thad to my home to confirm window dimensions. He also helped me decide on an external headrail instead of one that would be inset, due to the shallow depth of our windows.
Once PowerView Gen 3 was officially shipping to dealers this past spring, my custom order was shipped to Thad, who scheduled a time for installation. Like most PowerView Gen 3 installers at that time, this would be Thad’s first project with the product, beyond setting up a demo kit in his own home. To illustrate how simple the installation and deployment of my six shades were, I recall it taking Thad almost longer to carefully unbox the shades in my driveway than to actually install and program them. The entire project, from unboxing to when Thad went on his way, took less than two hours.
After unboxing the shades, Thad next measured and leveled the shades location and drilled holes for the mounting brackets. The key to hanging window coverings on side-by-side windows, of course, is making sure their heights are exactly the same. Thad mounted each bracket above its corresponding window and then installed each headrail. Lastly, he removed the battery compartment for each shade and installed the included 12 AA batteries for each one and clicked each battery pack back into place.
After the six shades were installed, Thad showed me how to add each one to the system using the PowerView app, and then we added a
remote to each room, connecting them to their corresponding shade or shades. After each shade was added to the system, Thad used the app to set upper and lower limits on each shade. Although my system didn’t technically require a hub, Stephenson included one in my system so that I could eventually add third-party control integration from Amazon Alexa and/or my Control4 system. I plugged that discreet little device into a wall outlet for power, and Thad added it to my system via the PowerView app. Then, before he left, Thad gave me quick tutorial on building scenes and automations. It was simple enough that my user training took only a few minutes more of Thad’s time. I then thanked him, and Thad was on his way.
Over the next several weeks, I played around with various settings to enable the shades to operate as “automatically” as possible. Thad had added the four rooms to the app (we called the Master Bath a separate room, even though it is controlled by the Master Bedroom remote control), but then I added the scenes. I even
color coded each room’s scenes to more easily locate them to their various locations within the app.
At first, I created more scenes than necessary, so l eventually went back and streamlined them to just five: “30 Percent Vanes Open,” “Vanes Open,” “Vanes Closed,” “100 Percent Blackout,” and “Fully Open.”
Next, I added my “Automations,” which are better explained as “the times of day when a scene is activated.” For example, for our wake-up scene in the morning, I chose “30 Percent Vanes Open,” so as to ease us into the day.
So far, I have absolutely loved my Hunter Douglas PowerView Gen 3 motorized shades. They are the true definition of “home automation” in a way that I haven’t really experienced before. Even my Control4 lighting control system requires that scenes be triggered by a press of a button, whereas our Hunter Douglas shades simply do their thing based on programmed times of the day. It’s a great way to save time and energy in my home.
I love the “set it and forget it” capability of the PowerView Gen 3 scenes and automations. The PowerView app is intuitive and super easy to use, and the pebble remote is a sleek and simple control option within the room.
I’ve appreciated the relatively quiet motors on the Hunter Douglas shades, as well. In fact, sometimes I actually sleep through the opening process on a cloudy morning, because I didn’t register the sound of the motor and the clouded-over sunlight didn’t blast me in the face. If I wanted it even quieter, there’s a “quiet” setting where the motor turns more slowly, thus more quietly. However, the app warns that this will use up the disposable batteries faster, so I’ve kept my shades at normal speed.
For integrators who haven’t added motorized shades to their portfolio, Hunter Douglas offers a huge selection and what seems to me to be a very fast learning curve for installation? The more installations you do, the easier it will be. And, for homeowners who want a home automation product that truly works the way it should, automated motorized shades are a must. I can’t recommend Hunter Douglas PowerView Gen 3 enough. x
By Ryan Gustafson
At the dawn of home theater, the only way to enjoy crisp, bright, true-to-life images on a large projection screen was to sequester it into a dark, cavernous room such as a basement, where no sunlight could spill in. For some folks, this arrangement was perfectly acceptable, if not coveted, as it established home theater as a special entertainment destination intended to be savored only during special movie nights. Other times, the well-appointed room remained sadly unused.
These types of occasionally used, intricately adorned, dedicated theaters still resonate today, though technological advancements have pushed the boundaries into other areas of the home, even to the outdoors. Paired with the appropriate video projector, projection screen materials can render near picture-perfect images in any type of room environment. Options are available for small rooms, rooms flooded with sunlight, and large, open social spaces where the audience can mingle. Screens can disappear or stay deployed depending on the room aesthetic. Materials can
conceal loudspeakers and optimize the resolution of ultra-high-definition content.
Once deemed problematic and impossible to work around, these variables are no match for the optical projection screen properties of today. “Solving tangible problems is the basis behind Screen Innovations’ screen technologies,” said SI Director of Training Sasha Osadchy. “We’ve adapted our screen materials to combat light, space, and other obstacles to make home theater a viable entertainment option for every type of viewing environment.”
The responsibility of a projection screen is to optimize the performance of the projector; if a projector has been engineered to produce super bright images, for example, so should the screen. Screen material is like the tires on an automobile; if you put spare tires on a Ferrari, it’s not going to deliver the performance expected. The tires need to work in tandem with the engine. Screens must do the same for projectors, no matter what the viewing conditions are.
Naturally, with options comes confusion, but there are some general guidelines to follow when selecting the best type of screen for a particular viewing space. We’ve broken them down here:
Arguably the biggest turning point for home theater is the advent of the ambient light rejecting, or ALR, projection screen. Home theater enthusiasts and professional home tech installers “saw the light” when ALR screens hit the market several years ago. Family rooms, dens, spare bedrooms, even enclosed porches — spaces that used to be strictly off-limits due to an abundance of natural or artificial light — could now function admirably as home theaters, with the room lights on and the windows uncovered.
A lot of science and physics goes into the manufacture of an ALR screen to enable it to reject light coming from lamps and windows but reflect light cast onto it from a projector toward the viewing area. This rejection of ambient light precludes the picture from being washed out,
colors muted, and details fuzzy and undefined. These features make ALR a great option for convivial, casual viewing of a ballgame, during a cocktail party, while enjoying dinner — anytime at all, lights on or off, window shades open or closed.
In a conventional home theater setup, the screen and projector sit several feet apart. The bigger the screen, the further away from the projector and your home theater seating. For reference, if a screen measures 150 inches diagonally, a standard long-throw projector would sit about fifteen feet away. This might be a tight, if not an impossible squeeze, for many homes.
Thanks to ultra-short-throw (UST) projection screens and accompanying projectors, square footage is no longer a constraint. Designed to display images from a projector placed just inches away, UST projection screens are a boon to small rooms. Many of these screens combine the optical properties of ALR to prevent ambient light from washing out the image.
The best place for the front speakers of a surround-sound system is directly in front of the seating area, the same for a screen. There’s no need to sacrifice one for the other thanks to acoustically transparent (AT) screens. Comprising hundreds of imperceptible, pinprick-sized perforations, an AT screen allows sound from speakers hidden behind it to pass through the material unaffected. Audio stays on point, as does the video, with an additional cosmetic perk of making the front speakers disappear.
When a big screen is added to a family room, den, guest bedroom, or other space already used for a specific function, it can look sorely out of place. Solving this problem is a
motorized projection screen; hiding until showtime, it allows a room to retain its primary purpose, but easily transitions into a home theater as the screen unrolls from a cassette mounted discreetly to or above the ceiling. Cassettes can accommodate most screen sizes and types including ALR, UST, AT. Even if there’s a TV on the wall already, there’s no need to move it. You can use the display for casual viewing and bring down the projection screen — and the lights — to make the room feel like a real cinema. You can get the best of both worlds without changing the original vibe of the room.
If there’s one area that can accommodate a super-size screen, it’s the outdoors. Unlike the audience of a conventional indoor theater, however, outside viewers are inclined to move around. They may begin watching the show from the swimming pool, move to the barbeque
area, and finish up in an enclosed patio. A wideangle, outdoor-rated screen that can be easily enjoyed from multiple vantage points is wellsuited for alfresco entertainment.
Taking this concept to another level, dualsided 360-degree screens afford the luxury of viewing content from both the front and back of the screen so one group can watch through the kitchen’s open French doors while another group partakes from the backyard, for example. Motorization solves another problem: The cassette protects the screen material wind, rain, dust, and other outdoor elements when not in use and a complementary zipper track keeps the screen taut against the breeze while it’s in viewing position.
Given the vast assortment of projection screen materials designed to combat common viewing obstacles, it’s no wonder two-piece projection systems are in high demand. According to a report by MarketWatch, the global projection screen market is expected to rise at a considerable rate (2% CAGR) between 2021 and 2025. Performing beautifully in rooms bathed in natural and artificial light, lacking the space standard long-throw setups or no set seating area, projection screens are more versatile and accommodating than ever before. Designed to work around issues that used to deem them only usable in dark, solitary spaces, projection screen materials have become a welcome addition to any area inside or outside a home. x
The Somfy Clever Tilt Motor is Somfy’s first interior do-it-yourself motorization solution, enabling homeowners to motorize their existing 2-inch to 2.5-inch blinds and integrate them into their smart home.
The Somfy Clever Tilt Motor comes packaged with seven adapters for connecting the drive motor to a blind’s tilt rod, three sets of adapters for securing the drive motor in a blind’s head rail, and a detailed instruction manual
There are two different battery packs for powering the system. First is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack. Second is a reloadable battery tube that holds eight AA batteries. Somfy also offers a handheld remote control. The above can all be purchased together in kits for motorizing between one and four shades.
The Somfy Clever Tilt Motor can optionally be paired with the Somfy TaHoma Gateway. This device provides smart phone control with the free Somfy TaHoma app, integration with voice assistants, and integration with a wide variety of smart home platforms.
Somfy provided me with a Clever Tilt Motor, lithium-ion battery pack, remote control, and
TaHoma gateway to evaluate for this article.
When you open the box and examine the Somfy Clever Tilt Motor you immediately realize that this product is different than the typical smart home product for the consumer market. For example, instead of a plastic enclosure for the motor there is a very solidly constructed metal case.
In addition, the instructions are very detailed and clearly written. And, if the instructions aren’t enough to help a user install the product, Somfy has invested in the development of YouTube videos that demonstrate exactly how to perform the installation.
However, it is important that before you purchase a Somfy Clever Tilt Motor to motorize your blinds that you validate that it is compatible with your blinds. Somfy offers a compatibility tool on the website that walks you through the process.
Installation of the Somfy Clever Tilt Motor was surprisingly simple.
Next, take the blinds down off the wall and remove the end caps from both ends of the blind’s headrail. You next need to choose the
adapters that provide the best fit. There is a diagram in the instruction manual to help with this process
As stated earlier, the Somfy Clever Tilt Motor also ships with seven tilt rod adapters. You next need to choose the adapter that matches the cross section of your blind’s tilt rod (square, hexagonal, etc.)
Next, slide the tilt rod in your blind away from the current tilt mechanism and remove the tilt mechanism. Note: you will either have to remove the current tilt wand or cut the tilt chords to remove the tilt mechanism.
Now, insert the tilt rod adapter from step four into the motor, snap the adapters from step three onto each end of the motor, slide the motor into the headrail and the tilt rod through the tilt rod adapter, replace the headrail end caps. Now, re-install the blinds on the wall.
Next, insert your fully charged lithium-ion battery or new batteries in the battery tube depending on which battery you have. Then, plug the battery into the motor and mount the battery to the window frame, wall, or headrail using the included clips.
Two sets of clips were included with the lithium-ion battery that was included with the Somfy Clever Tilt supplied to me. The first set of clips is for mounting the battery to the wall or window frame using screws and wall anchors (also included). The second set allowed the battery to be clipped to the blind’s headrail.
Once the physical installation is complete and the battery is plugged in, the next step is to program the upward and downward tilt limits using the Somfy remote control. The sequence of buttons that need to be pressed on the remote to set limits are a bit tricky to follow. For this reason, the instructions warn you to read each step fully before starting to execute the instructions for that step.
There is also a procedure for setting a favorite tilt position that the blinds will move to whenever the “My” button on the remote is pressed. Somfy has an excellent YouTube video that describes the entire installation process.
The Somfy Clever Tilt Motor can optionally be paired with the Somfy TaHoma Gateway. This device provides smart phone control with the free Somfy TaHoma app, enabling automatic control of blinds via programmed scheduling,
The Somfy Clever Tilt Motor comes packaged with seven adapters for connecting the drive motor to a blind’s tilt rod, three sets of adapters for securing the drive motor in a blind’s head rail, and a detailed instruction manual. It can optionally be paired with the Somfy TaHoma Gateway.
whether at home or away, integration with voice assistants, and integration with a wide variety of smart home platforms. Somfy has drivers available to allow many smart home platforms to communicate with the Somfy TaHoma gateway. In addition, blinds outfitted with the Somfy Clever Tilt Motor and integrated with the Somfy TaHoma Gateway can be controlled through Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, IFTTT, and the Somfy Tahoma North America Smart Phone App.
The app also allows you to create scenes where a device can be triggered to take a specific action at a specific time, at up to 1 hour before/ after sunrise, or at up to one hour before/after sunset. There is also the option to choose which days of the week this will occur.
One limitation that I ran into was that Somfy only supports a single close position for blinds. The reality is that blinds have two close positions. The first close position is with the slats tilted all the way upward. The second close position is with the slats tilted all the way downward. This leaves users with two options.
One option is to define the close position either with the slats slanted fully upwards or the slats slanted fully downward. Then, you can define the open position with the slats
horizontal. This makes logical sense and maps the open/close positioning of the slats to a voice assistant and other third-party integrations. However, it eliminates access to 50% of the possible slat positions because, for example, if “close” is defined as the slats being fully tilted upwards and open as the slats positioned horizontally, then you can’t position the slats anywhere beyond the open position with the slats facing downward.
The second alternative is to set the open position as the slats facing fully upward (even though this closes the blinds) and the close position with the slats facing fully downward (again closing the blinds). Then save the blinds in a horizontal position (fully open) under the “My” button. This allows the blinds to be positioned anywhere between fully closed with the slats facing upward and fully closed with the slats facing downward. However, integration with third-party systems, and even when using the TaHoma app, becomes somewhat confusing. This is because telling the blinds to open will send them to a position where they are closed. To open the blinds, you have to trigger a scene that will send the blinds to the position saved under the “My” button.
If these limitations don’t bother you, then the Somfy Clever Tilt Blind Motor is a good choice for motorizing existing blinds. x
By Jeremy Glowacki
My brother Todd and his family upgraded their living situation recently by buying a larger home in their current neighborhood. The new house provided several upgrades over their first home but also a few challenges, so they brought in a contractor to spruce up the property a bit.
One of the relatively minor upgrades was finding a proper mounting approach for their family room television. The 65-inch flat-screen had been on a TV stand in their prior home, but in the newer home Todd wanted it mounted in a niche above the fireplace.
During a quick walkthrough of the property prior to their move in, Todd casually pointed out this TV location, and I said, “Oh no, you don’t want to put a TV up there; it’s a terrible viewing angle. Unless… you get yourself a MantelMount pull-down TV mount.”
With a MantelMount, I told him, you could “dock” the TV in the niche above the fireplace, but when you wanted to watch something on it, you could lower it down over the mantel and in front of the fireplace. It would provide a much more “proper” viewing angle and a lot less neck strain.
I wasn’t even back home yet when I got a text from Todd with a link to the MantelMount website telling me that he definitely wanted to go with this approach.
After the mount arrived (the box was HEAVY; that lifting mechanism is no joke), my brother in law Corey and I scheduled a time to come to Todd’s new house and install it.
knew that it couldn’t be that hard to figure out, but for some reason looking at an X and Y grid chart and having to place measurements into a formula just kind of hurt my brain.
There’s a little thing we call “trial and error,” and I honestly don’t think there was a single step in this process that Corey and I did correctly the first time. Almost every step involved a misstep, followed by a recalculation, unscrewing something, or drilling a new set of holes. All day long… trial and error.
The first step was easy enough. We attached the braces to the back of the TV. Irregular TV backs require a slightly different length of screws, but ours was a flat-back TV. The next part was attaching a horizontal brace to the brace extenders. This is where Corey and I really started to spin our wheels. I think we both are used to glancing at instructions and then following our intuition. For some reason, this mount was just a notch more complicated than we were used to, and we never really got comfortable with why certain steps were necessary until later on when another part or piece was added. That’s when we would go, “Oh, the horizontal brace is what the sound bar wings attach to!”
I can’t lie, we were both a bit overwhelmed by the installation instructions, particularly the part where math was needed to calculate the minimum vertical position of the wall plate. I
Speaking on those sound bar wings… that part of the installation, alone, almost gave me a migraine. My brother in law needed to run an errand during our project, so I used that alone time to stare at the hole patterns on the wings and how they would connect to the horizontal brace, and the to the back on the sound bar. I attached the sound bar close to the bottom of
the TV as possible while allowing enough space to grab the tilt handle that would be attached later from in between the bottom of the TV and the top of the soundbar. I also wanted to hide the angled wings as much as possible behind the TV and soundbar, keeping the aesthetics as clean and possible.
It was another trial-and-error effort to get it right. I spoke to an integrator friend of mine later, who said that sometimes his lead tech throws up his hands at this stage and simply drills new holes in the back of the TV (not recommended!).
Next, we attached the “hideaway handle,” choosing it over the optional heat sensing handle, mostly due to aesthetics. The heat sensing handle is a MantelMount invention. It turns red if the heat from the fireplace gets to be too much for the TV, meaning that you need to extinguish your fire or raise your TV. It’s a nifty feature, but a little too bulky with our soundbar, so we went with the more discrete (and appropriately named) hideaway handle instead.
Believe it or not, we were now only to Step 2 in the instructions, which was to “determine wall placement.” This is where the journalism grad looks at a X and Y grid to determine the minimum vertical position of the wall plate. With most TV mounts, this would be very straightforward. However, with a mount that extends out and over a 10-inch-deep mantel, there’s more to consider. You start by measuring the distance from the bottom of the vertical braces (not the extenders) to the bottom of the TV or soundbar. You then look at the chart/ table/box of numbers to find the minimum distance between the mantel and the bottom of the lower wall plate. After that, you do some math and attach the plate to the wall studs. Finally, we get to the fun part, attaching the lifting mechanism into the slots of the wall plate.
This is the heaviest part of the mount, due to the gas springs and hinges. It’s also the moment when you might realize (like we did) that you did the math wrong and that you will have to unscrew the wall plate from the studs, move down another inch or two so it doesn’t “dock” so high up on the way, and try again.
Fortunately, the professional painters were still onsite, so we advised Todd to have them patch up our mistakes and repaint behind the TV. We were so paranoid about the TV hitting the mantel, that we cautioned on the side of mounting it higher, and it simply wasn’t centered in the wall niche, as a result.
One of the key final steps is adjusting the lifting force of the gas springs by turning a bolt within the mechanism. This, again, was trial and error, as the initial calculation caused the TV to spring back just a bit too hard against the wall (we were holding on, so no damage was done), but eventually we got it to a tension level that very smoothly returned the TV to the “docked” position.
By the time we were done, we had absolutely no more energy or patience remaining. We told Todd about the Velcro adhesive that attached the white, paintable covers over the wall plate behind the TV, and he said he would tackle that part of the project on his own. A day later, I checked in with my brother, and he told me that my nieces loved having the TV pulled down to watch Peppa Pig and their various shows and movies. He was very happy with the mount,
especially not having to install it himself. My running joke has become, “Is the TV still on the wall?” but honestly, I feel good about the final results of the work that Corey and I did that day. The MantelMount looks good and works as expected. My integrator buddy tells me that the remote controlled “automated” MantelMount is often the preferred way to go because clients simply find it easier to push a button or have the TV automatically drop down when they hit the power button on their TV remote. That being said, the automated mount is even more difficult to install (you have to cut into the studs and install a backbox) and the price for the whole system is about three times as much as the manual model.
For the money, I think that the manual-life MantelMount MM720 is perfect for an abovethe-mantel TV installation. It takes what is a less-than-ideal TV location and makes it more flexible and reduces your eye and neck strain, as well.
Like anything, the installation process would get easier the more projects you do, but I would definitely recommend to professionals to practice at least once in your showroom or your own home before installing a MantelMount in your client’s home for the first time. Consumers, on the other hand, should think twice before diving into a DIY MantelMount installation. Not to diminish the capabilities of Corey and me, but a professional-level mount really deserves to be installed by a professional. x
By Henry Clifford
I never thought I’d be sitting here writing a product review for an HDMI balun (those little black boxes which magically transport HD video over long distances). That’s always ranked right up there with watching paint dry or listening to the sweet music of nails on a chalkboard. Yet here I am, about to tell you about the AVPro Edge ACEX40-444-KIT. I know what you’re thinking; “That’s got to be some story…” You’d be right.
For years, I’ve lived with an intermittent video issue in the Clifford family room. I chased the gremlin up and down the hardware and software stack with the intensity of a madman. My own family would lovingly encourage my efforts, reminding me that I own a custom AV business and why didn’t anything ever work in our house? Cheered on by their confidence inspiring exhortations, I trudged through replacing the Apple TV, HDMI cables between the AV receiver, TV, and the baluns, not to mention throwing in various prayers, chants, incantations and sprinkling holy water on everything for good measure.
Each time I made a change, the issue vanished for a time, only to resurface precisely when the entire family sat down to watch a movie. The opening credits would start and, without fail, the screen would go black. A collective groan would surface from my wife, son, two daughters, mother-in-law, and the dog. I would get up, go to the AV closet and start disconnecting and reconnecting cables. Sometimes that would do it; sometimes it took more.
Toward the end of my rope I started putting ice packs on the various components figuring that heat was causing the issue. That was my most successful effort, but still required a lot of babysitting throughout the movie with fresh ice on standby. Enough was enough. I decided to do the unthinkable. I decided to ask for help. I rang up my buddy Tim Painter. He’s a
manufacturer’s rep for a bunch of product lines but above all else is a really smart guy who will come and bleed with you in the field. I’m not sure if they include “bleeding with you in the field” in rep school, but they damn well should.
“Tim,” I said. “My wife is about to leave me, and my kids aren’t far behind.” Needless to say, the irony of my predicament was exquisite. Who else but the owner of a CI business, someone with access to any electronics product he wanted, would be having an issue like this? Tim listened politely to my story and thought a minute before asking me if I’d heard of AVPro Edge. I vaguely recalled the name. Our installers run into thorny issues all the time and I’ve heard them use certain products as a fix all. I was pretty sure AVPro Edge gear was one of these brands. “They’re not cheap,” said Tim. I didn’t care. I was at the point I might imagine one reaches when considering an $8 bottle of water after wandering in the desert for a few days. The money had ceased to matter. “Will it work?” I asked. “Oh yes,” said Tim.
The next thing I know I’m standing in my family room holding a box from AVPro Edge in my sweaty hands. Baluns all follow a fairly consistent pattern. There’s a transmitter, receiver and usually one or both ends are powered. In this case, the AC-EX40-444-KIT is powered at the transmit end. I replaced the existing baluns one at a time and reused the existing unshielded Cat-5e cable already in the wall. Tim said he
would’ve liked to see me upgrade to Cat-6 and I committed to doing so down the road.
I wish I had a more exciting end to the story other than “it just started working,” but I don’t. I didn’t let my guard down for a few days, but, ever so slowly my tightly coiled stress started unwinding. The AC-EX40-444-KIT had saved the day. My family started using the family room again and I could feel domestic harmony slowly returning. I let Tim know about my experience and thanked him profusely for fixing my family.
I didn’t want to let the AC-EX40-444-KIT off that easily, so I decided to throw it a variety of signals to see how things would fare. I’m happy to report it handled everything I volleyed over including 4K60 HDR10 and Dolby Vision. My overall cable length ran around 75 feet, but the AC-EX40-444-KIT is capable of handling HDR up to 110 feet. It can also handle control from a variety of different platforms, 2 channel audio extraction and downscaling for matrix applications. In short, I was blown away.
The AC-EX40-444-KIT retails for around $1,000. While that may sound like a lot of money for steady HDR 4K video to your wall mounted TV, consider what you’d spend if your TV only worked properly 90% of the time. Unfortunately, watchable video isn’t a 90% game. We’ve all become used to lightning fast internet and things that work properly every time. That’s the bar. Hopefully you’ll learn from my mistakes and choose the AC-EX40-444-KIT for your TV the first time around. x
By Henry Clifford
I’ve been searching for the ultimate virtual meeting hardware technology stack since the beginning of the pandemic. Cameras, microphones, wireless click dongles… you name it, I’ve probably tried it. While Barco ClickShare enjoys a dominant share of the wireless presentation space, I’ve made it my business to stay current on what else is out there. One of these shiny objects is the ScreenBeam 1100 Plus, a small network appliance oriented around wireless presentations, video conferencing, and signage with no hardware dongles. How would it perform?
The ScreenBeam 1100 Plus showed up in a plain white cardboard box. I flipped open the cover to reveal a quick start guide, the ScreenBeam unit itself, power supply, HDMI cable, and an innovative looking magnetic mount designed to allow easy tool-free mounting behind most televisions.
I followed along in the included guide and attached the ScreenBream 1100 Plus to the back of our video display and plugged in the power. A boot screen showing a spinning orange then green donut appeared in the middle of the TV. I waited a few minutes until finally a home page appeared, prompting me to connect to the ScreenBeam 1100 Plus’s own Wi-Fi network. I changed networks and surfed over to its configuration page in my web browser. The layout is very simple with logical tabs dividing up all the main sections that one might expect
I decided to upgrade the firmware first, which took a few minutes. Everything came back online quickly, and I then changed the network over to our main Wi-Fi SSID, so everything could be accessed together.
Each time I made a substantial change, the unit required a reboot, which took around two minutes each time. I changed the unit name, time zone, and a few settings around AirPlay and Chromecast.
With all the configuration tweaks complete, I started trying to connect from a variety of different devices, beginning with my iPad. I chose screen mirroring, entered the four-digit
code and, voila, everything worked seamlessly.
I moved over to an iMac and tried the same thing, this time extending my desktop to use the ScreenBeam 1100 Plus as a second monitor. Same result, everything flawlessly came alive. I tried a few more device configurations, including Windows computers, and the ScreenBeam 1100 Plus handled them all with aplomb.
Even without hardware dongles, ScreenBeam makes connectivity a snap by offering its own internal Wi-Fi network to users as an option. There’s even a QR code on the home screen taking the guesswork out of hooking up and helping the “don’t make me think” factor substantially.
The ScreenBeam 1100 Plus isn’t cheap at $1,200, but most of the decent wireless presentation gear all starts well north of this price range. It’s easy to install, configure, and manage.
What’s not to love? This one’s a no-brainer “buy” recommendation. I look forward to seeing more innovations from the folks at ScreenBeam down the road. x
that today’s homes and businesses are built on. With the emergence of more and more sensors and processors that control and monitor all or parts of the entire home or business, if that foundation is weak, the entire building suffers the consequences.
Your clients shouldn’t be subjected to erratic power and the inconveniences that arise from it.
RoseWater is at the forefront of designing the most complete, highest quality
management and storage system in the industry.
product, the SB20, is the only product that provides:
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power always with
with
that
Auralex Acoustics has added three new finishes for its high-performing T’Fusor sound diffusor: Carbon Fiber, Sports Car Red, and Matte Black. The new models retain the distinctive and highly diffusive T’Fusor surface profile while complementing the aesthetics of any studio, stage, theater, or control room. The panels are made from durable ABS and are available as single units and four-pack sets. The original white (and paintable) T’Fusor remains available as well.
Integrated Fiber Platform, a product engineering and development business with experience in network communication technologies is introducing an 8-port Data to Fiber Network Switch and In-wall Fiber Transceivers supporting up to four network device connection ports. The IFP Connect in-wall transceivers are single-gang devices and connected to the network switch via single-mode fiber optic cable which is terminated by the installation technician with an SC connector. A twoconductor cable to each in-wall transceiver provides 12V power from a centralized power supply connection block.
The AudioControl Architect Model P250EQ is a 2-channel amplifier engineered with an emphasis on sound quality plus key features for the custom installation channel. It requires only a 1U rack space yet delivers output power of 250 Watts per channel into 8-, 4-, and 2-Ohm loads. Its Constant Power Mode amplifier platform is highlighted by an overbuilt power supply and advanced filter stage mated to robust output transistors capable of both high-current demand and rock-solid stability across the required range of load impedances.
Clare Controls, maker of the ClareOne wireless security and home automation system, has released an update to its app that enables the creation of smart home and home security control widgets on mobile device home pages. The change leverages the latest capabilities of Apple’s iOS15 and Google’s Android 12 mobile operating system to improve user experiences and simplify smart home control. It also improves connection speed and reliability between the ClareHome mobile app and ClareOne Panels.
Harman’s ARCAM is adding the AVR11, AVR21, and AVR31 AV receivers, and the AV41 preamplifier processor. The brand’s most fully equipped home theater models to date, they enable users to experience the latest AV technologies with the musicality for which ARCAM designs are renowned. All models embrace HDMI 2.1 with HDCP2.3 for support of resolutions up to 8K at 60fps or 4K at 120fps, along with support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. Audio specifications include the latest Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Auro-3D immersive audio formats.
Bowers & Wilkins has launched two amplifiers specifically designed for professional installations. The CDA-2HD (pictured) is a high-power distribution amp with embedded DSP that allows optimization of a wide range of products and dynamic EQ for the brand’s subwoofers. It boasts two channels of 500 watts each, within a half-rack width 2U design. The CDA-4D is a compact distribution amp with embedded DSP that allows optimization of a wide range of products and dynamic EQ for Bowers & Wilkins subwoofers. It offers four channels of 125 watts each, and its 1U design delivers highperformance from minimum rack space.
Crestron has added Spotify Connect to its expanding collection of digital music services available through the recently launched DM NAX 8-Zone Network Streaming Amplifier. The latest firmware update enables Spotify Connect to be streamed to the amp via a wired or wireless home network connection for an elevated music experience coupled with customized control available directly through Spotify music service or from any Crestron interface.
Severtson Screens is now shipping its Ambient Light Rejection (ALR) options for its Impression Series residential and commercial projection screens. It has a 170-degree viewing angle and is available up to 120 inches (diagonal at 16:9 aspect ratio), with additional custom options also available. Severtson asks that customers contact them directly for individual pricing for their specific needs and for production and delivery timing.
Blustream has added the HEX70HDUK-KIT and the CEX4K-KIT to its AV signal extender line. The multiformat HEX70HDUK-KIT is an HDMI 2.0 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 (18Gbps) HDCP2.2 HDBaseT solution using CSC technology to deliver HDMI, USB-C, and DisplayPort over a single Cat cable. Designed for retrofits, the CEX4K-KIT enables 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 performance over a single coaxial cable. The HEX70HDUK-KIT has an optional tabletop enclosure designed to provide a secure solution for mounting the HEX70HDUK transmitter.
The Focal 300 ICA6 angled in-ceiling loudspeaker was designed to be discrete and easy to install. Inspired by the 1000 ICA6 loudspeaker from the high-end 1000 Series range, it incorporates French manufacturing with an Aluminum/Magnesium inverted dome tweeter and Flax cone, exclusive technologies for high quality precision and total sonic coherence with the brand’s classic loudspeaker lines Aria and Kanta. In addition, the ready-to-paint magnetic grilles supplied with the product ensure a completely unobtrusive installation.
Klipsch’s new Reference Premiere series speakers feature the latest technological audio advancements, premium materials, and cosmetic details. The thirdgeneration series uses new, larger proprietary Tractrix horn technology to improve high-frequency response and extension, while enhancing imaging and dynamics. Klipsch signature copper Cerametallic woofers with aluminum Faraday rings and Tractrix ports provide low frequencies while minimizing distortion and maximizing efficiency. An exclusive Linear Travel Suspension (LTS) titanium tweeter maximizes dynamics, delivering detailed performances.
The JBL Stage Architectural Series loudspeakers from Harman Luxury Audio Group were crafted to be visually discreet with Zero Bezel magnetic grilles and easy installation. They feature highperformance design elements, including 1-inch/25-millimeter aluminum acoustic lens tweeters, JBL’s patented High-Definition Imaging (HDI) waveguides, baffles with acoustic smoothing, and premium crossover components. A range of eight models is available in various configurations for both in-wall and in-ceiling installations.
C2G, the Legrand brand, wants to make it easier for 4K HDMI source signals to reach 4K displays in conference rooms, classrooms, lecture halls, and many other installations where distances are far beyond the limitations of standard HDMI cabling. The new HDMI over Cat Extender Box Transmitter to Box Receiver - 4K 60Hz allows a 4K HDMI source to be extended up to 115 feet for 60 Hz 4:4:4 or up to 131 feet at 30 Hz 4:4:4 to a 4K display using a single Cat-6/6a Ethernet cable.
Leon Speakers, building off its popular Terra LuminSound outdoor speaker portfolio, has added a new, taller model to the line. The Terra LuminSound Bollard speaker features the same handcrafted components and built-in low-voltage lighting as the shorter landscape version but stands taller, thanks to a 21-inch aircraft-grade aluminum base. At an overall height of 32 inches, it is available with both halo and adjustable pathway lighting.
URC’s MRX-30 and MRX-15 premium system controllers can now be used to control Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD. Through this integration, users can natively control Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD across URC’s portfolio of interfaces including tabletop controllers with 7-inch to 10-inch touch screens (the TDC-9100 and TDC-7100), inwall controllers with 5-inch to 10-inch touchscreens (the TKP-9600, TKP-8600, TKP-7600, and TKP-5600), and ergonomic handheld remote with 2.4-inch capacitive touch screen (the TRC-1480).
Samsung’s newest 2022 Home Entertainment lineup addition is the QN100B, a 98-inch Neo QLED 4K TV. This new flagship model offers impressive black detail, 120W Dolby Atmos sound system, and 5,000 nits of brightness for HDR10+ quality video. It also features a Slim Fit Wall Mount, designed exclusively for the QN100B, as well as a Connected Stand, a special back mount holder for the One Connect Box and is packaged in a 360-degree full-metal design for aesthetics-conscious endusers. It is Samsung’s first 4K TV capable of playing four sources of 4K simultaneously via the Multi-View feature.
Giveaways at trade show booths have a familiar ebb and flow. Something gets hot, everyone has it, and then it goes out of style.
There was the selfie stick rage. Then the fidget spinner craze. Some poor souls have boxes of these giveaways in their garages right now I’m sure. Maybe gathering dust next to boxes of unused hand sanitizer bottles.
I got a selfie stick at a conference once, and I still don’t know what to do with it. Maybe it would make a good back scratcher. Maybe I could load my fidget spinners on it like a less tasty donut stick.
I’m not sure what they’re giving away at residential technology conferences these days, but hopefully there’s some cool swag (“stuff we all get”). I bet there are folks loading up bags of booth tchotchkes. Swag monsters signing up for everything like a Godzillow.
There is a lot of cool tech going into homes these days and not just the stuff that George Orwell predicted.
As homes are getting increasingly smart, doesn’t it feel like we might be getting dumber? Who needs to remember anything anymore when we have pocket supercomputers at our fingertips? Not to mention on your kitchen counter.
I have one of those screen things that you can talk to, but I don’t like how bossy it can get. The other day I asked it to play Meatloaf, and it responded “Really?” “Are you sure?” “How about a recipe for meatloaf instead, or I can get directions to Boston Market; there is one open until 8PM.”
Google makes some of these products, including one called Google
Home. Great name. They used to be so consistent with good names for products; they never missed. They invented the verb “Google” after all. When they keep things simple, it still works, like Google Shopping or Google Finance. GMail is simple with a clever twist, but still a solid product name.
Over the years Google product naming consistency has faded. Maybe it started when they got cute with Google Glass or the quickly forgotten Nexus Q. Google now has a machine learning technology called Tensor Flow. Maybe I’m dumb but that sounds like a bad bathroom experience, not something cloud robots rely upon. Stick with the simple names, Google.
A lot of people use technology to lose weight. These days a stationary bike costs more than one that can actually get you somewhere. Some would argue that it is easier to stay fit with the relentless expansion and improvement of technology, but I find it even more difficult because of the constant reminders about “cookies.”
Like a lot of people, I probably use my phone too much. I never text and drive, but sometimes on long road trips I might fire up YouTube, but just for the blue light to help me stay awake.
When I’m in bed reading about sleep hygiene on my phone, sometimes I have trouble reading the screen because my eyes are aging. I have to hold my phone farther and farther away from my face. Which reminds me, maybe I have a use for that selfie stick after all. x
Mark Masters is Colorado’s second cleanest comedian. He is a comedy club headliner and dive bar open-mic’er.
