Securing Your Connected Life.
By Paul Williams
This post comes from Paul Williams, Vice President of Security & Communications Products at Control4.
Extra Extra! A New Issue of Home Smart Home Awaits!
By Crystal Watts
Home automation systems can impact a person’s life in a myriad of ways. In this issue of Home Smart Home, you’ll see how the owners of a high-end villa in Spain use their Control4 system to enjoy the finer things—such as mood lighting, automated towel warmers and perfectly heated whirlpool tubs and swimming pools—while in their absence guests are able to operate the lights, thermostats and other electronic amenities with ease. Meanwhile...
Control4 Audio/Video Solutions Just Got a Whole Lot Better.
By Tyler Reed
This week Control4 announced the acquisition of Leaf, a distributed audio/video product developer. Leaf has been at the forefront of audio/video distribution technology and with this acquisition Control4 will continue to lead the home automation category in media distribution. This influx of talent into Control4’s engineering team will provide speed and precision towards delivering scalable, high-fidelity media distribution products.
Watch the Worldwide Launch Event!
By Brad Hintze
On Tuesday, February 10th, we unveiled some amazing new products and enhancements to the Control4 experience to compliment our offering of smart home solutions. This was a live event filmed in and streamed to our Dealers directly from ISE (Integrated Systems Europe) in Amsterdam. Now you can watch the recorded version of our live event here!
Time to Ditch the Memory Sticks for a Network Attached Storage Device?
By Guest
If your household is like mine, you probably have a collection of memory sticks floating around inside drawers, coat pockets, backpacks and car glove compartments. For years, these little sticks have been our go-to devices to store our multimedia collection—music, videos, photos and other forms of entertainment—as well as important documents.
CES: My Favorite High Tech Products
By Guest
This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas seemed all about the Internet of Things, or IoT, for short. There were washing machines and dryers that connect to the Internet, surveillance cameras that zip real-time images to smartphones and scads of devices that can be monitored quickly and conveniently from an app on a phone or table. I saw connected versions of thermostats, garage doors, security systems, and more...
Apps: Are They Making Your House Too Complicated to Control?
By Guest
According to Gartner, Inc.*, by the year 2022, the average family home could contain more than 500 smart devices, and it’s likely that each of these products will be able to be controlled via an app on a smartphone or tablet. On the surface, this might sound like a good idea, but imagine hunting and pecking through dozens of individual apps to manage your home environment. Instead of making your house easier to control, your app-infested phone could conceivably make the process painfully tedious and time consuming.
Home Automation is to be Experienced, Not Seen.
By Crystal Watts
When you walk into a smart home, what do you expect to see? A robotic maid? A cacophony of gadgets flying around? When you walk into a Control4 smart home, you should see simply—a home. But some amazing things will be going on beneath the surface, even if you can’t see wires and control boxes spread out everywhere.
#SmartHomeChat Recap – Tech, Trends & Insights
By Crystal Watts
In the first edition of #SmartHomeChat we were joined by 30+ different users including media, custom integrators, fellow industry manufacturers and tech-loving consumers to share real, truly valuable information surrounding the evolution of today’s smart home. The conversation was certainly fast paced, but was chock-full of home automation information, testimonials and of course some humor. Check out our recap here...
Cloudy with a Chance of Frustration: Reliable Home Automation Is Key
By Tyler Reed
The cloud: it’s just such a fun term to use, isn’t it? I can’t think of a more overused tech “buzzword” right now and the meaning seems to have become incredibly vague. Oftentimes, when someone doesn’t understand exactly how something in technology works they’ll tell you it’s done in the cloud.
Going Away for the Holidays? Keep Your Home Secure with Home Automation.
By Crystal Watts
If you’re braving holiday travel this year to visit relatives, good luck to you. Seeing family and loved ones is what Christmas is all about, but the getting-there-and-back part is always a bit stressful (and sometimes headache-inducing). Imagine being stuck in the airport, or grounded by a blizzard, and worry begins to enter your mind; Did I remember to arm the house’s security system? Did I leave the garage door open?...
The First #SmartHomeChat: JOIN US!
By Crystal Watts
Participate in the First #SmartHomeChat When: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 at 2:00 p.m. EST (12:00 p.m. MT) Topic: Smart Home Technology, Trends & Insights Click for more details and information.
6 Ideas for Automating your Holiday Decorations
By Crystal Watts
The anticipation for the holidays begins as soon as the weather starts to change, and your home should be ready for it. No matter what holiday you’re celebrating this winter season, there is plenty that your home automation system do to help you and your family get into that holiday mood. Here are a few tips to have the best holiday season yet.
Internet of...Toys? Christmas Gadgets for Techy-Tots.
By Crystal Watts
Kids of this era are interested in toys with flashing lights, robotic movements, and loud noises—you know, the ones that leave us parents wanting to rip our hair out in patches. However, Internet-connected toys aren’t all bad, in fact, some of them are great for education and development. So with an “if you can’t beat them, then join them” attitude, I bring you these pretty cool, techy toys for connected kids.
User Interfaces—The Human Link to a Home Automation System
By Guest
While home automation systems are perfectly capable of running a household in this hands-off fashion, many homeowners feel more comfortable being able to actively operate the various products and systems under the backing of an automation system. Rather than relying completely on a system...
Innovative Smart Home Applications
By Guest
The primary function of any home automation system is, well, to automate the electronic systems in your house and to let you control them easily and succinctly through devices like smartphones, tablets and touch screens. At certain times, and under certain conditions like first thing in the morning or when you swipe an icon on your tablet, an automation system can turn lights and A/V equipment on and off, raise and lower motorized window shades and regulate the thermostats. But there’s more to an automation system than its ability to put your home on automatic pilot...
Unexpected Automation: 5 Interesting IoT Products
By John Pherson
Remember when the internet was only confined to our computer screens? Back when you had to pay for AOL, and Google was still a word only mathematicians used? Times have changed and our phones, tablets, and computers aren’t the only things that are connected to the net anymore. Designers are breathing new life into everyday products by redesigning them to intelligently interact with their users and other devices around them. Here are some interesting and unexpected products the Internet of Things has given birth to.
4 Home Automation Ideas for Entertaining Guests This Thanksgiving
By Crystal Watts
Thanksgiving has the potential to get pretty chaotic. With all the cooking that needs to be done (add to that guests arriving and football blaring on the TV), it can be pretty easy to lose a degree or two of thankfulness. Here are 4 great smart home ideas that will help you kick off the holiday season just right.
The Smart House of the Future [INFOGRAPHIC]
By Crystal Watts
We couldn’t help but wonder what people of today think the “house of the future” will look like—or what they want in their own futuristic smart home. So we took a survey and compiled some of our favorite responses...
Working with a Home Automation Integrator
By Guest
A realtor wouldn’t dream of selling you a house without understanding your needs and wants (or “must-haves” as they’re known these days). The same goes for the professional who designs and installs automation systems. Here are 10 tips on how to effectively work with a home automation professional.
Finding the Troublemaker
By Mike Sawyer
Your Control4 system was built from the ground up with a wall-to-wall, curb-to-hall, complex system in mind. Complexity is what Control4 is for—it manages the increasing number, variety, and communication “languages” of your home’s devices, helping all work as a single, integrated system. And every Control4 product has been designed for versatility, reliability, and durability...
The Benefits of Professional Installation
By Guest
Home automation has been inching slowly into the mainstream, and with new do-it-yourself focused systems hitting the marketplace hard and heavy, consumers are faced with the decision on whether to tackle the setup of a home automation system themselves or to hire a home systems professional to do the job. There are many good reasons to pay for a professional, and the good news is that most manufacturers have implemented technology into their systems that can streamline the programming and installation process significantly. Here are five reasons that’ll make you think seriously about hiring a home systems professional.
Double Double “Tech” and Trouble: Top Halloween Apps
By Amber Mansfield
Halloween is fast approaching and it is my favorite time of year! The spookiness of October always excites me. I can’t get enough witches, ghosts and zombies on TV so I decided to look and see what fun I could cook up on my phone. Here are some of the best (and free) apps I found...
Home Automation. It Ain't Just About Lamp Control.
By
I can remember the exact moment when I started in home automation. My wife and I were much younger and she had “inherited” a lamp timer; you know, one of those plug-in-the-wall, hog-the-whole-socket, ugly-as-sin, monstrous things you plug your lamp into so you can...
The Control4 Advantage
By Guest
When designed and installed properly by a trained, knowledgeable home systems integrator, a home automation system is able to perform some amazing feats. This goes for systems offered by Control4, as well as many other home automation products on the market. Where the differences between systems often lie is in the engineering of their control platforms. For example...
