Innehållsförteckning för March - April 2019 från Residential Tech Today

A Programming Design Kit (PDK) or Programming Scope Document is the best way for an integration company to document and convey the operation and function of a large and complex integration system in a client’s home. When an integrator is conducting client interviews or is in the discovery phase with a client, they ask lots of questions about that customer’s home life: how they use their current technology, how technology could help simplify their daily routines, what areas of their home they use the most, and many others. This gives the sales and design team a starting point to suggest what technology could be implemented to help make the client happy about being in their home. Once the technology has been selected and designed, however, the next step sometimes gets…

Water and electricity are considered two necessities of life. Here in North America, we often take access to clean drinking water for granted. Once that basic need is met, we can focus on the other provisions that help us live, work, and play. For many of us, that includes smart home technology, electronic devices, and the electricity that powers them. Just as our bodies need clean drinking water to function at their best, our electronics need clean power to operate at their maximum capabilities. Dirty power that comes from the electric grid and feeds into our devices can damage sensitive gear, shorten the lifespan of sophisticated AV components, and wreak havoc with sound and picture quality when we settle in to enjoy our favorite media. In short, inconsistent power can…

When I tell people that I work with my husband (happily… most of the time), the reaction I get most often is surprise with a bit of, “I could never do that,” followed by a peering, “How can you do that?” Yet, many home technology firms – along with heating/cooling, electrical, plumbing, building, design, etc. – are comprised of people who work with someone they love. I know I’m not alone. This can create a live/work/play trifecta of greatness or great struggle, depending on the strains that each side plays on the other. Chances are, it’s a balance of blurred priorities, social demands, and financial obligations. While a perfect formula for the infamous “work-life” balance is yet to be found, you have influence over how the scales move; it starts…

When it came time to personalize the home he shares with his wife, Michael Foit envisioned bronze, copper, reclaimed wood, Star Wars, and cinema legends of the past (his wife is partial to fairies). It might seem like an odd combination, until you see it in person. When Foit wasn’t able to custom build his home in Zionsville, IN, he knew he had to find a way to make the seven-figure spec home his own. The owner of high-efficiency window supplier Apex Energy Group is a former actor who also enjoys painting and other design-centric hobbies. Foit’s artistic side came in handy, as he designed many of the custom elements that make his home unique. His father-in-law helped him design an exposed wine cellar that’s a focal point next to…

According to the Recording Industry Association of America, streaming music services accounted for three-quarters of U.S. music industry revenues by the middle of 2018. Chances are very high that you already subscribe to a service like Spotify, Tidal, or maybe even Pandora, and that service represents the bulk of the money you spend on recorded music every year. With all of the sectors of the market pretty well covered – from low-fi radio like streaming for casual listeners to uncompressed audiophile offerings for hi-fi enthusiasts and everything inbetween – one has to wonder if there’s really room for yet another streaming music service. The owners of Qobuz – a French company founded in 2007 – certainly hope so. After a few false starts in the autumn of 2018, the service…

OSD Audio Amplifier gives users a compact but dynamic 2.1-channel wired and wireless streaming music solution. The amp’s wireless streaming solutions include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 with aptX. OSD Audio’s Nero Studio5 speakers were designed for a true monitor-grade performance at a budget-pleasing price. STREAM XD $299.95. MSRP Studio5 $199.95/pair Atlona Gigabit Ethernet data networks. Available via download, the new capability is available for single-channel OMNI-121, dual-channel OMNI-122, and OMNI-521 networked AV decoders. Free download Atlantic Technology’s dome tweeter with a powerful neodymium magnet structure. The midrange and tweeter drivers are internally isolated within their own airtight sub-enclosure. The cross-over is a 4th order Butterworth asymmetrical time-aligned Linkwitz-Riley design with bi-wire inputs. $2,599 each AudioControl immersive audio decoding that is optimized to properly reproduce the full dynamic range of IMAX…

APRIL 3-5 Azione Unlimited Spring Conference Bonita Springs, FL 15-18 HTSA Spring Conference Chandler, AZ MAY 9 Toronto Technology & Business Summit, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 23, 25 Southern California Technology & Business Summit Irvine & Los Angeles, CA 29-May 3 The ProSource Spring Meeting San Antonio, TX 21, 23 Texas Technology & Business Summit Houston & Dallas, TX JUNE 8-14 Infocomm, Orlando, FL…

Clean power is the often-overlooked essential ingredient to a successfully integrated smart home. Dirty power that comes from the electric grid and feeds into our devices can damage sensitive gear, shorten the lifespan of sophisticated AV components, and wreak havoc with sound and picture quality when we settle in to enjoy our favorite media. Plus, inefficient power is also a challenge when it comes to finding ways to maintain a healthier planet. Here’s a look at some statistics about the biggest power consumers, by device and sector. U.S. RESIDENTIAL RETAIL ELECTRICITY SALES FROM 1999-2017 IN BILLION KILOWATT HOURS SHARES OF TOTAL U.S. ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY END-USE SECTORS, 2017 RESIDENTIAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY END USE Air Conditioning 17% Miscellaneous 12% Space Heating 15% Lighting 10% Water Heating 14% TVs and related…

The Home Technology Association is the first independent organization to educate and empower homeowners in their technology purchases, recognize exceptional businesses, and elevate the technology integration industry’s status and stature with a rigorous third-party certification process. Since its launch in the fall of 2017, the organization has grown to 142 certified firms across the U.S. The goal of the organization, according to Director of Certification Josh Christian, is to provide “third-party validation that you’ve always wanted to share with the client that you are truly a good, reputable firm that really takes care of your clients.” Christian likes to compare HTA certification to similar designations in other businesses. Consumers buying a diamond, he says, know to look for GIA certification from the Gemological Institute of America. Those looking for a…

At Cloud9 Smart, one of our guiding pillars is that, “In our interaction with clients, trades, and each other, we focus on the collective goal.” Surely, the collective goal of our industry is to work together with our clients and other trades to build the best systems that we can. To that end, we work every day to engage with the architecture and design community in our hometown, New York City, and we have developed a catalog of courses to present to architects for continuing education credit. Our most successful course is the one that we refer to as “Smart Home 101.” In it, we discuss the goals of our work as technologists, and how we would like to work better together with our design and architect partners on projects.…

Clients often ask me, “Will home technology increase my property value?” I usually cringe at the thought of responding. It’s a question our industry has been long afraid to answer. So much so that we generally avoid the return on investment (ROI) conversation altogether. We’ve done it to ourselves over the years with bad products, poor installation quality, and lousy service after the sale. In an effort to change things up a bit, our company recently began addressing ROI in our pre-sale conversations through the eyes of the client. One of my mentors is fond of saying, “We sell things everyone wants and nobody needs.” He always gets a laugh from the crowd, but it’s unsettling each time I hear it. Are we truly wanted and not needed? I don’t…

The beginning of the year is a great time to start fresh and develop new, positive habits. For integrators, a power foundation is a good place to start to ensure that common power problems don’t disrupt system performance for new installations today and into the future. The first step to preventing power problems is knowledge. We tend to think of electricity as constant and flowing, where whatever you plug into the outlet will start to work. If it didn’t work or stops working, a common first step is to check the equipment for broken or faulty parts. But what happens when a device fails, as does its replacement, or other devices in the system? Instead of looking to the equipment to blame, poor power quality could be the culprit when…

The dorm room is likely something that most people are familiar with. Whether from personal experience or a variety of movies or TV shows, you can likely imagine floors and walls adorned with dirty laundry and band posters. For many, the dorm room is a rite of passage, a first opportunity at true independence, a refuge from the watchful eye of strict parents. However, while the dorm still represents a certain new level of freedom, the modern dorm room looks different than it did even just 10 years ago. With the constant proliferation of technology and smart devices in today’s world, many universities have been implementing upgrades. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that in 2014, Brad Zucker of Zucker Properties approached Paul Ostrin, CEO of Unlimited Integration, about…