Since home automation allows the home to be aware and communicate, a home owner can receive notices or reports of actions taken to conserve energy, long before the power company steps in. Whether it’s lighting control, heating and cooling or cost-based management, a home automation system provides proactive management. California may take the lead here in the States, but “Green Fever” is a world-wide interest, with the Europeans becoming far more conscious due to higher prices for energy.

Tags: Title 24, Paul Nagel, Control4, home automation, smart home

As Safe and Sound System’s Tom Morris tells Brad Baldwin, the home owner needs to make sure that the integrator has installed the system multiple times and that they how to tie the pieces together. If fact, picking the right integrator is likely to lead to a better overall product experience. Picking the wrong integrator will leave a home owner frustrated and with a lot of money missing from their wallet.

Tags: home automation, Tom Morris

In this video walk-through, you will see the home automation nerve center with integrated media controllers, satellite tuners, DVRs and DVD changers. One of this home owner’s favorite features is the use of a single remote to access all the features of their smart home. Find out why their friends like to come over to their house to experience distributed audio throughout the house or to watch movies.

Tags: Control4

Tags: John Yoon, Wally Barnum, Control4, Brad Baldwin, ZigBee

Tags: John Yoon, Bill Harper, Control4

Ed Ryan and Scott Moulton at Control4 talk about how little, everyday tasks can become conveniences with Smart Lighting. With Control4 “scenes,” you can wake up to lights that come up gradually, have shades open to let in the sun, and have favorite wake-up music grow in volume. Keep kid’s from turning on lights in the middle of the day. High-tech switches easily integrate into your walls and support more commands. Plus the same remote you use to turn on your TV can also control your lights. Finally, you can even turn lights on or off with a Web browser from a remote location.

Have you ever jumped in bed and then realized that an outside light is on but the switch is all the way downstairs? Or have you ever wanted to wow your friends in your home theater by having the lights dim gradually over a 10-second period? Find out how.

Transcript:
Host: Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
Guest: Scott Moulton
Guest: Ed Ryan

Announcer
This is RockyMountainVoices powered by PodTech.

Ed Ryan
“So in the morning, instead of waking upto an alarm clock, personally I wake up better to the sun rising regardless of time of the day, you can have the lights gradually dim up and have your music come on, have the blinds raised 20 minutes before you wake up, the temperatures come up. So, you can have control of your whole environment.”

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
This is Brad with RockyMountainVoices and I’m here today with Scott Moulton and Ed Ryan from Control4, welcome to the Podcast.

Ed Ryan
Thanks.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
I’m excited to learn a little bit more about what smart lighting would mean? I know you guys talk about the smart home and we’ve talked a little bit about automation in the past and even some of the digital home but tell me a little bit more about lighting Ed, and what is smart lighting?

Ed Ryan
Well, lighting is one of those technologies that everybody takes for granted and doesn’t really understand the benefit of what smart lighting or automated lighting can do for you. The first obvious benefit is that you can control lights from wherever you are without having to go to the specific light switch that controls that lighting. So, it gives you remote access and remote control to all your lighting. The other thing that over lays on top of that is that you can control your lighting in an automated way.

So, you can have events in your home automation system that trigger lighting coming on. So, for example, at a certain time of day, half an hour before sunset, you can have your outside lights come on or at certain times of the day, you can have them shut off or based on events, if a motion sensor goes off because you are getting up at night, you can have the pathway to the kitchen, turned on. So, there is all this automation that you can get built into the lighting deck, most people don’t think about until you really use it and have access to it

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
You really need smart lighting, I mean isn’t it easy just to turn on a switch in your house?

Ed Ryan
Well sure, and what does it need right? You need food, you need air, right? Because if we get down at that level, do you need — so what one of my favorite keypad buttons in my house is at the top of my stairs looking down into the basement, I have programmed a button that shuts all the lights off in the basement. There is nothing more annoying than having a light being put on and having to walk down to where it is. Last night for example, a perfect example, one of my children turns on the fan in the bathroom all the time and leaves the lights on and not just the lights but the fan.

So, at 11:30 at night, I’m going to bed and this bathroom is right underneath our bedroom and that fan, the ball bearings aren’t quite working exactly right and so it’s a very noisy, rattly fan and so I can’t go to sleep if that fan is on. So, without smart lighting, I’d have to get up out of bed, go downstairs, turn the fan off, come back up. Where last night, it’s one of those moments where you say, “Boy, I’m so glad I have this system” I reached over to my nightstand and I have a basement off button, so I didn’t have to search for which light it was, which fan it was because there are a couple of bathrooms down there. I just pressed that ‘off’ button, the fan goes off and I roll over back in bed saying, “Ah, isn’t this great?”

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
So, one of those moments where you’re happy you made that investment?

Ed Ryan
Yeah, it’s little things like that, but once you live with this, you just really appreciate the value of it. I have another keypad button when I leave the house, its house off. So, when everyone is out of the house, I don’t have to run around the house and make sure I didn’t leave the light on. I just pressed that button and the whole house, the lights will shut off and I’m good to go, no need to worry about it.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
Scott, I know one of things that I’ve read in some of your brochures even on the Websites. If you’re in an emergency situation, you get a fire in your home or something, you can program your system, your lights would be flashing or other things in the outside. Tell me a little bit more about that and maybe some of the benefits that’s around security and really kind of helping in your home.

Scott Moulton
Sure, yeah as Ed mentioned, one of the benefits is that the lights — multiple lights can interact with each other but because you’re tied into a whole home automation system, really the lights can interact with other systems in the home as well. And so, whether that’s a security alarm that goes off, or a smoke detector, or a motion detector, those lights can respond accordingly.

So, that could be a case like you mentioned, a fire alarm that goes off and so emergency vehicles are on their way, so to notify those vehicles where the home is at, the front porch lights could flash on and off but it could also be something more convenient oriented in the way that for example, coming home from work. You never have to arrive home to a dark house. I open the garage door and that triggers lights in the home to come on, right? So, it gives me a pathway from the garage into the — through the mud room into the kitchen, things like that. So, I don’t have to walk into a dark home, carrying groceries and fumbling for lights or anything like that.

Ed Ryan
Yeah, just safety and security; one of the basic things about it is having the lights on, so you can see where you’re going, right? So, you get up at night; our house we have the lights programmed, so if it’s after 11 o’ clock at night, so lights come on, they only come on 50%. So, in the middle of the night, when I’m up, I turn the light on I don’t have to do the one eye dance, I can’t open both eyes because it’s too much of a shock to my eyes, its painful. So, you have the lights come up just a little bit, so it’s comforting to your eyes. The other thing, if you need to get up and walk downstairs, go into the kitchen, or answer a door, or something, you can have the entire lighting path, the place where you’re coming from to where we’re going to and back, be lit just with the touch of a button.

So, you don’t have to keep going forward into the dark, then hit that switch, go to next one, hit that switch. So, it’s little things like that that. You know a lot of people fall, accidents happen based on that, or like Scott said you’re carrying something and you don’t have the ability to turn the light switch on, how often you come into the house with the groceries and you’re fumbling around, trying to hit a light switch, where as you don’t have to do that.

So, it’s just little conveniences like not having to go downstairs to turn the fan off or not having to turn all the lights off as you’re walking some place or have things happen automatically be a motion sensor or a time of day, or some other event happened. A cool thing that I do in my theater at home, is I tie the lights dimming to starting a movie.

So, when I play on my DVD player or my VCR, the lights dim down over 15 seconds and when I press ‘pause’ or ‘stop’, they dim back up. It’s a simple thing, but when you’re done with the movie and you shut the screen off, well, its dark, or you have to get up and turn the lights off after you’ve started the movie or where you just have the convenience of doing that. The other convenience is wherever you are in the home from any user interface, not just a light switch or a keypad, but from the remote control from a touch panel, from across the Internet using our four side product, you can control your lighting from wherever you are. So those little conveniences add up to just having a lifestyle impact, once you live with it, you really don’t want to be without it.

Scott Moulton
My experience is a lot like, you know when I first experienced DVR TiVo right, it’s a question do you really — how big of a deal was it to be able to skip commercials really? But you live with that for a little while and then you go to a hotel for example and then you’re frustrated by the fact that you have to sit through commercials, you can’t skip ahead or anything like that and lighting is very much the same way. You get used to just those real simple conveniences of being able to turn all the lights off with a single button press, or I had the scenario in my home of, if I return home past 11 o’clock, I press the ‘Welcome Home’ button and it would give me a pathway of light, but if it was after 11 o’clock, it would only go to 50% and that’s usually because I created it that way because I was usually carrying my daughter and I hated the fact that I would come in, the lights will come on full bright and she would wake up and she was usually asleep.

So, I just created that simple programming that if during the day, the lights would come on full bright but if it was after a certain hour, they would only come on to 50% but it would turn on all the lights to her bedroom, so I could take her, put her in a crib and then it’ll be done and so real simple little scenarios like that, but they’re just, they’re addictive.

Ed Ryan
The other thing is the whole save your money concept or being energy conservative. I grew up in a house where if we had the lights left on for five minutes, where they weren’t being used, boy, my mom was all over me, like “shut the lights off.” And my kids aren’t — haven’t been raised that way, we just leave the lights on all the time and it just bugs me. So, simple things like a pantry light, where I open the door to our pantry, I have it programmed, so five minutes after the light was turned on, it shuts off.

So, you hit the pantry light on, you get what you need, you forget to shut it off, you shut the door well without the Control4 system, automated lighting, that light may stay on for four hours the next time somebody goes in the pantry, now it just shuts off five minutes later. I can set the lights to shut off after so many minutes after use or I have a sweep in my base — 9:30 in the morning after they’re all off to school, every light in the basement shuts off.

I just know that well for the most part, the lights are off in the basement they’re not going to be left on all the time. In my case, whether it’s conserving energy or not, it’s just peace of mind because I feel better when I know the lights aren’t left on around the house, I’m not wasting energy. So, that’s another aspect of it, it gives you more control over your environment in your home.

Scott Moulton
You know, even while you are not at home, the home can give this ‘lived in’ appearance right? So, that if anyone would be happening by or be scoping the house at all, they would get the appearance that people are living in the house because not just a single light, you can buy timers, and just turn on a single lamp, rooms can turn on and off in different parts of the house and kind of cascade through so that it gives a more intelligent kind of safety and security type scenario.

Ed Ryan
So, one of the big benefits of having not just lighting control, but having it as part of a whole home control package, is you get to all the interaction between the different systems in your home, so it’s not just lighting. So, for example, we have what we call an agent or something you can set up in your system, it’s called the wake up agent.

So, in the morning instead of waking up to an alarm clock personally, I wake up better to the light or the sun rising, regardless of what time of the day. But you can do things like set your wake up scene, so if you like to sleep cold and you have the temperature down, you can have 20 minutes before you wake up to temperatures come up. You can have the lights gradually dim up and have your music come on, have the blinds raised.

So, you can have control over your whole environment and have it all be integrated into a Control4 system and not just be lighting control. Its really upto your imagination, like I talked about the theater example, there’s a lot of things where you can integrate lighting into other things that you’re doing to set moods, to add convenience, to add safety to whatever you’re doing which really adds the benefit of the whole is greater than some of the parts.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
That really answers my question. Earlier on I talked about just flipping a switch, it’s more than flipping a switch. If you have an integrated system, because you’re flipping lots of switches all simultaneously with dimming and I think that’s in a sense, answering my own question, it is a lot easier when you look at all of those systems working together as a one whole.

Ed Ryan
Right because you interact with your whole environment, you don’t interact with just your music, or just your lights or just your heating or climate control. It’s the entire environment with what you’re doing, with what your lifestyle is and because the system is automated and it’s intelligent, you can set it up to completely fit like a glove with your lifestyle and how you want your environment to behave and lighting is a key part of that.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
The thing I keep hearing Ed is that it’s just everyday available and it’s easy and it’s just always there. I think you have one example, I remember back before my car didn’t shut the lights off automatically, after so many seconds and I would come out to a parking lot to a dead battery. I mean this is the same kind of thing I imagine it’s that feeling that you lock your car doors, lights on, as a matter it’s going to be off in 30 seconds and it’s that same comfort that you get of walking away and knowing that everything is under control.

Ed Ryan
Yeah the whole point of having a control system in your house is to enhance your lifestyle, add more convenience, more comfort, more peace of mind and the little things that you point out, the little annoyances in life, a dead battery from a light being left on or you just think there is any number of things having this system give you full control over your environment from wherever you are and have it be intelligent enough to interact with you and behave without you having to remember, “Oh I got to remember to shut that light off”, it just knows and it will do that for you.

It’s kind of like the TiVo example, where if you haven’t had it, you really don’t know what the big deal it is, but once you start living with it, you say wow, what I — how would I be if I moved houses will I spend the money to move this over and if you haven’t lived with it, you’d have a question but once you have experienced, you say “Boy I don’t want to live without this anymore”, it’s added that much value to my lifestyle.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
Scott, where can we tell listeners to get more information about Control4 and lighting?

Scott Moulton
Yeah, anybody can log on to the Control4.com Website and there it’s the site is divided into the different sections and different systems, different pieces of the Control4 solution. So they can go into lighting and look at all the different products that are available as well as some easy scenarios that can be accomplished with the Control4 system.

Ed Ryan
And then we have a dealer locator up there. You can put in your zip code and you can see all the dealers that are in your area, contact a couple of them and see what their capabilities are? We have a large number of dealers that are certified and trained to do this all the time and can come out and do a walk through with you and find out exactly what your needs are and get your set up.

Brad Baldwin – RockyMountainVoices
I think you kind of answered some of my earlier questions. I think lighting and integrated into the home automation system, the whole thing is, obviously, you get a lot of benefit. Thanks for joining us today on the Podcast Ed and Scott.

Ed Ryan
Thanks for having us, thank you.

Announcer
This has been a RockyMountainVoices Podcast, visit us on the Internet at www. rockymountainvoices.com.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Ed Ryan, Scott Moulton, Control4, Smart Lighting

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

(more…)

Tags: Control4, Ed Ryan, Jeff Thomas, Brad Baldwin

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

Transcript:

Host: Brad Baldwin – Rocky Mountain Voices
Guest: Kim Anthony Parker – iPort
Guest: Kip Meacham - Card Access
Guest: Gina Lutkus – Somfy
Guest: Key Digital Systems - Speaker
Guest: Thomas Pickral - Home Automation Incorporated
Guest: Dave Froerer – VisionArt
Guest: David Richard – Eaton Home Heartbeat
Guest: Wade Smith – WellSpring Wireless
Guest: Abbas – DSC
Guest: Terry Hoffmann – Johnson Controls
Guest: Nick Finamore – Ember Corporation

Dave Froerer – VisionArt
Hello, my name is Dave Froerer with VisionArt. VisionArt is a system that we manufacture to conceal plasma TVs and flat panel, any flat panel TV that’s mounted either inside the wall like this one is, or can also be mounted - surface mounted on the outside of the wall. We have about 300 pieces of art and about 40 frames. You can also do custom art; you can also do custom frames. So, these are clay prints and it is rolling up and down, so the whole frame doesn’t move. So, you have a beautiful piece of art and instead of watching the TV — and then when you want to watch TV, you hit the ‘TV On’ on your Control4 remote of course and the art rolls up into the top of the frame. We make every single one of them one at a time for every plasma TV and flat panel on the market. So you tell us what TV you have, and we make it for that exact TV dimensions. We also have a cooling system - if you put it inside the wall so that you don’t have to worry about burning up the TV or the LCD. We have about 300 pieces of art; so we have books like this that are available or everything is on our website, it is visionartgalleries.com. There’s also a link on the Control4 site on the vendor partner area back to our website. So you can view all the frames on our site and all the art. You can also click the frame and it will go around the art for you. You can go to another section of our website and you can play with the wall color after you’ve pictured art and your frames.

Kip Meacham - Card Access
Hi my name is Kip Meacham. I’m the Vice President of marketing for Card Access. We are an ecosystems partner with Control4 and have actually produced some of the first products designed specifically for the Control4 Home Automation Platform. For example, this device introduced in November is our in home wireless contact switch. It allows you to interface multiple contacts including an integrated magnetic contact and two external contacts of the installers choosing into a single wireless device. It will also measure temperature internally and externally and when powered by DC power, will act as a ZigBee repeater in the ZigBee mesh. We’re announcing at this show, a wireless contact relay allowing us, as you’ll note on this little functional fountain, our ability to turn that fountain on and off wirelessly, again using the Control4 Home Automation Platform. What Card Access has done, is building a variety of wireless products, our expertise being in developing high performance Wi-Fi and other wireless technology radios; and we are integrating that wisdom into the products that we’re delivering to the marketplace.

Gina Lutkus – Somfy
Hi, how you doing? My name is Gina Lutkus from Somfy Systems. Somfy systems is a manufacturer of tubular motors for window treatments. As you can see here we have teamed up with Control4 and we have a device called RTS 2 R232 and how that works is, whether we are using a battery operated shade, a low voltage or hard wired motor, we are able to tie it into a Control4 system. You can see on the Control4 system, this is the main screen, we type in — we have it on the blind shade, we want to bring the blinds up, we touch the upper end, the blinds go up and the light goes off. That’s one scenario that you can have in your house. You can also bring the shades down as well; the shade comes down, the light goes on. It’s another option or scenario that you could have in your house. Like I said before, if somebody offers a battery operated low voltage and hard wired systems, our radio brand name is called RTS which stands for Radio Technology Somfy. So the device that we would use to connect to the Control4 system is XN2 or R232 to RTS device to be able to control that making you control upto 16 different channels, whether you want individual window treatments or group of window treatments.

Kim Anthony Parker – iPort
Hi, my name is Kim Anthony Parker. I’m the Director of Product Development for iPort and today we’re showing integration of iPod to the Control4 system; and the thing that we love about Control4 is their ability to distribute this content that’s on your iPod throughout your entire house; and the thing about iPort is, we’ve allowed iPod to now make that information available to you over RS232. So, with that being said, now you can, with Control4, take your system remote control or your mini touch screen or your TV GUI or your 10-inch touch panel or all those products that Control4 offers now, and we go to music - we select music, we then select iPort as our source and we’ve set it up. So now you can see - you can browse the music just like you would on the iPod. So we want to go, select an Artist, we select Artist and then we select an artist and then we go and play the song or the album and hit select and now we’re playing the song that we’ve selected. So, now this would be something that would be distributed through the entire house or played just in a local room. The nice thing about it is it also plays your Apple protected iTunes downloaded songs so that you are not having to worry about if a customer says, “Ay, how come my iTune songs aren’t playing?” This does all that because it actually doesn’t analogue audio output. So, simplicity, easy to program, it’s a module that’s already built with your composer software. You just drag that module over into the home - your project file and then make your connections; your RS-232 connection and your audio connection and you’re off and rolling.

Key Digital Systems - Speaker
Brad, thank you for the opportunity to present my product line to you. A brief history of the company before we talk about the line and how it works with Control4. Our company is founded by Mike Tsinberg, with 39 HDTV patents. He is the number one patent holder in the industry and he is the founder of HDTV broadcast technology and DVD encoding technology. Our product line is composed of switchers, distribution amps, Matrix Switchers, video processors as well as video transcoders. One of our most exciting products is the HDMI2×4 Distribution Amp and Switcher, which basically gives you the flexibility of having both audio and video control - meaning, in the marketplace today, a lot of custom installers have problems with video resolutions not sinking up in HDMI as well as audio not sinking up because of the nature of the HDMI handshake. If there is ever a miscommunication that takes place, or the video resolutions aren’t set up properly or the audio resolutions aren’t set up properly, what you have is a miscommunication and an improper HDMI system; Key Digital addresses that - as well as Control4 being a tremendous partner to us, we have all the drivers available and we work with Control4 to have seamless integration with our products in their control system, and we thank them for the opportunity for being at the show with them.

Thomas Pickral - Home Automation Incorporated
We are HAI - Home Automation Incorporated, my name is Thomas Pickral, I am Manager of Business Development and what we’re showing here today is integration between HAI’s family of whole house automation systems and Control4’s Home Theatre Controller. What HAI specializes in is Lighting Control, Temperature Control, security in whole house audio, and what we are doing is, integrating that into control4’s Home Theater Control so you’ve got the ability to manipulate these things through your television or through a Control4 touch screen. So, HAI products like ‘security systems’ or ‘thermostats’ can be controlled through the interface on your television using the Control4 remote. So if you wanted to — while you’re watching TV, control the temperature on the thermostat, would have the ability to come in here for instance, you can down the temperature down to 72 degrees and it will update our current thermostat. You can do the same with ‘Security’ for instance. So if we wanted to go head and arm our security systems, we’d have the ability to do that - again, just right through the television. Now in addition to the interface provided by the Home Theatre Controller from Control4, HAI is also providing the ability to access these things through the telephone or through the web. So you’ve got the ability to log on and control all these devices - the telephone, by simply picking up the phone inside the house or from outside of the house by calling in or through the internet. So, we’ve got a product called Snap-Link which is this whole USB key and what Snap-Link does is, stores all the information for your house and you could plug it into any PC in the world and log on and control all these different devices. We’re also showing it here on this Samsung Ultra Mobile PC just as a demonstration, this is an off-the-shelf item we bought from BestBuy and it’ll allow you to again, come in here and control different devices like thermostats, adjust settings in here if we want to, or lighting control, and it will even let you view IP cameras.

David Richard – Eaton Home Heartbeat
Dave Richards, with Eaton Home Heartbeat Products and we are here in the Control4 booth, showing off our brand new product called Home Heartbeat. The product is very unique in that it is a home awareness type product using this ZigBee technology. We use a simple base station like what you see here, the base station reports to a home key, and then we have any number of various sensors like a water shut off sensor, a front door back door open and close sensor. We have range extenders, power sensors, all types of sensors that can be placed throughout the home and it is truly wireless. So there’s no new wires, and the great thing about the product is that all of these sensors report back to this base station and will give the home owner an alert of the status of that device. So, if a front door is open and it’s not supposed to be, an alarm goes back to this base station, reports to the key fob, where that alarm shows up on the key fob - and not only on the key fob but it also calls your cell phone or gives you an email report of the alarm. What’s also great about this is that — I’m kind of getting lost, but anyway let’s keep going. What’s nice about this is that because we do use the Zigbee technology, we’re allowed to communicate to the Control4 products like what we’re showing here. A simple open and close of a front door can now be reported back through the Control4 system where you can have a light turn on, you can also control ramp rate of how that light comes on based upon the open and close. The same thing can be utilized with a water sensor, if the water sensor detects water, it also can report back to the Control4 system, where then we can choose to turn the water actually off by utilizing our Home Heartbeat automatic shut-off valve or we can choose to do other types of functions through the Control4 system such as bring lights on or give you a blink because there is an alert going on. So the system reports utilizing alerts; you can receive an alert both through the home key while you are at home; it will vibrate or light up and give you an alert through the home key. You can also get alerts through your cell phone, and you can also get an alert through email, and we also introduced a brand new product here at CES, which is our Web portal. So, now you gain full control over the system, so I can see what’s happened in the past week, what’s happened in the past day, and also the alerts report back to the Web portal.

Wade Smith – WellSpring Wireless
I’m Wade Smith, I’m the CEO of WellSpring Wireless, and we make a broad line of sub-metering products that use ZigBee radios, and Control4 is kind enough to bring us in to talk about how we interoperate with their system, and we have here two example products, one is the utility meter - water meter in this case that’s tied to an automatic meter reading system with a two-way radio - ZigBee radio, and shut-off valve that’s battery operated so that the valve can change position in order to sense leaks and to curtail water use if the water bill isn’t paid or if there’s water found down the floor that prevent a catastrophic flood, also to sense small leaks that might lead to mould growth. So, we have another product here which is used in sub-metering of apartments and multi-family condominiums, co-ops, that sort of thing; simply - functionally the same as the utility product but with a smaller meter - 8 gallons per minute, same 2-way radio, in this case a (Inaudible) separate battery; and both of these products essentially function identically, but work at different ends of the marketplace. You can get more information on our Website which is wellspringwireless.com. So, I want to add my special thanks to the folks at Control4 who were kind enough to invite us into their booth to have us be one of the many companies that demonstrates how ZigBee makes our systems able to communicate with each other and operate together.

Abbas - DSC
Hi, my name is Abbas (ph) and here I am representing DSC. DSC is a leading Intrusion security provider that actually designs, manufactures and provides and sells Intrusion security control panels; and what we’re doing here, we are demonstrating the integration between a Control4 system and a DSC power series platform. DSC realizes — recognizes that this is where the market is going to go; it’s going to go into the point where everything is integrated. We are going to have a single point of control, where you control all the different components in the house from your — from the comfort of the home owner’s sofa. So what you see here, you have the DSC system with the new product that we’ve introduced, which is called IT-100. The IT-100, it’s a bridging module between the DSC control panel and the Control4; it’s a serial interface that enables Control4 to basically perform and control the DSC control panels. And some other functionalities — this is a demo screen of what the interface GUI looks like, and basically all you have you to do is, by moving your bunch - you’re armed with code — and by pressing on the remote control itself, you can enter the code, and that code will basically arm the system; and you could do it — just as easily, you can disarm the system by going to “Disarm with Code”, and you can enter the code in here. By entering there okay, you basically disarm the system. So, this system — this demonstration demonstrates the easy integration between the Control4 and the DSC Intrusion Security System via the IT-100.

Terry Hoffmann – Johnson Controls
Hi, I’m Terry Hoffmann and I’m Director of Building Automation Systems, Marketing for Johnson Controls. We are very glad to be here at the Control4 partner pavilion today, and we are demonstrating to people how Johnson Controls takes the Control4 technology and expands it to be used by people in the light commercial marketplace. The Control4 system, as we deliver it, is called Touch4 and it has some attributes that are slightly different than the residential systems that we all know. This slide summarizes those; it gives us low cost automation for residential and commercial systems, but focused eyes (ph) on the commercial; control and scheduling of lighting, audio, comfort, access, shades and blinds, monitoring, alarming of temperature, humidity, occupancy, and interface with the security system - all of those things that you might find in a normal Control4 system. We have added a BACnet interface through this system, so that we can do commercial temperature control, and in general some of the features like password, and scheduling and especially the alarming have significantly been enhanced for that real commercial building network that people are looking to expand the control system into. So, thanks a lot for stopping by.

Nick Finamore – Ember Corporation
Hi, my name is Nick Finamore, I’m with Ember Corporation. We are a proud member of the partner pavilion today here at Contol4’s booth at CES. Quite excited to be here; we’re the only chip vendor, we provide chips and software that actually to Control4’s devices as well as the many of the other members of the partner pavilion that you see here today. We provide chip and software technology that allow these devices to talk to one another, and for Control4’s system to be able to control and use, sense and monitoring information from those devices. What’s really exciting about what Control4 is doing is, they’re integrating multiple systems; people are providing lighting systems, providing security systems, media control and other devices and our chips can go into all of those devices, so that they can be managed and controlled with Control4’s system. What you’ll be seeing in the future is more devices, more manufacturers, who’re going be building devices with our chips and software in them that will allow them to be integrated with Control4’s system. So we are quite excited to be here with Control4, who have got many other customers that are building devices that will be integrated with Control4’s systems in the future. So, you can count a long list of manufacturers down the road that will be on our technology and using Control4’s systems.

Brad Baldwin – Rocky Mountain Voices
This has been a Rocky Mountain Voices Podcast. Visit is on the Internet at www.rockymountainvoices.com

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Control4, CES, Rocky Mountain Voices

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

Transcript:
Host: Eric Smith - Control4
Guest: Bob Metcalfe - 3Com

Eric Smith - Control4
I’m Eric Smith, CTO and Founder of Control4 and I am here today at the CES show with Bob Metcalfe, doesn’t need that much introduction, inventor of Ethernet, Founder of 3Com and many other things.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
…and Chairman of Ember.

Eric Smith - Control4
And chairman of Ember?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
A ZigBee supplier.

Eric Smith - Control4
Who is one of our best providers and we’re here just kind of talking about technologies and kind of the future of automation and what’s happening and it’s exciting for us to be involved in this kind of a business.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
People talk about the future of Home Automation, you have to be careful, it’s here already that what we’re really talking about, it has to do with very large numbers, but as you — we were talking earlier, Home Automation has been around for 20 years and it’s beginning to develop some scale now.

Eric Smith - Control4
We founded Control4 on two fundamental technologies, which are Ethernet and Zigbee and really we wouldn’t be the company we were without those things. We need those connectivity standards and honestly for a startup company, like us that’s focus on this kind of product to develop our own networking standards, just wasn’t feasible. And the main reason we needed too, is we needed some things for high throughput, higher bit rate, user interface and things like that and so certain things I mean that kind of thing did, but we also needed kind of a low bit rate, but high reliability, very inexpensive control network. Spent a lot of time looking for a solution, we even looked at putting Wi-Fi in light switches at one point, but it was then that we discovered ZigBee and got pretty excited about it.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, there’re different kinds of networks for different purposes and there’s large numbers of them in the notion that they’ll be in one emerging standard just doesn’t fly because of what you just said, there’s just such a diversity of the requirement.

Eric Smith - Control4
I think this is why people ask me sometimes when Home Automation standardize, will Windows PC just talk to it all, would it just — how’s it all going to work together and there has been this kind of dream of a plug-and-play home, you put in a light switch, put in a thermostat and it just works. And I often tell people, “Well, look at your PC today. How many different ports are on the sides of that PC?” So, why is there an Edge Modem in it and a Wi-Fi modem underneath in that port and a traditional 56K modem and a USB and a FireWire and a parallel port and a serial port and a mouse connector and a cable connector, or a keyboard connector and a video connector, why so many ports? And that’s a pretty standardized area, it’s we’ve been working on it for a long time and that to think there one standards is going to do, everything seems pretty strange.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well the problem with that suggestion that the Windows PC would be the center of everything is just how what a bad starting point Windows is for something that supposed to be easy to use and transparent and user friendly. I mean we live in fear at our house that something will break with the computer and then we’re going to have to call somebody to come in because we can’t fix it ourselves.

Eric Smith - Control4
I’ve been seeing especially with the advent of the Media Center PC, which is a pretty fun technology, I really enjoy the Media Center PC, but just like any other experience I’ve had at the PC, it’s a PC and occasionally it falls down and people, I don’t know the last time I’ve had to reboot my Sony receiver, it’s been a long time.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
You have this, as you just said this Ethernet ZigBee combo in your products, so what do you use each of them for? I guess you would use the Ethernet for going up stream into the Internet and you would use ZigBee for going down stream into the control points?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Yeah, generally, we just occasionally use the Ethernet to get between devices when it’s possible to, but what we really needed and Home Automation has been around for a long time. I think most consumers are becoming aware of it recently, but it’s been around for 16-17 years at least. I mean that’s how long I’ve been involved in it, but it’s always been kind of this metaphor you’ve either had these kind of, like your XTen stuffing by RadioShack that works most of the time, but was very inexpensive, or you had these very nice wired systems. The problem is what’s the odds that as you have a piece of 5-wire in a light switch box, it’s pretty low for most consumers.

ZigBee is just amazing and because it gives us a very robust, very inexpensive control network that makes all the devices talk and they talk reliably and I think most of it has to do with the mesh networking capabilities there where every device doesn’t have to see, it’s way all the way back to the controller, just as we’ll see the next device.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I think you underestimated how old XTen is. I mean I think XTen was around in early 80s, so that be 20 some years ago. It’s amazing how that has persisted.

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s still around and it’s — but it has been mostly a obvious thing because it doesn’t always work. And so, it’s really hard for someone who makes a business of selling Home Automation to put in XTen, because if a certain light in the basement won’t turn off because there’s a compressor on it deep freeze down there next to it, there is nothing that do, or can do about it. And the consumer is going to say, “Why is that? You’ve said it would turn off the lights, it doesn’t turn off that light; I want my money back.” ZigBee allows us to provide the kind of reliability of the wire systems, but very close to the price points of the old XTen systems.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Have you thought ahead to when every home has every device on a Control4 network whether there’ll be any interference or overlaps or security breaches are in?

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s definitely something that’s concerning that’s one of my favorite things about ZigBee, is the fact that it has encryption built into it, so that your neighbor can’t just hack your lighting system, or even worse, your security system. I love that and I love the fact that there’re different frequencies. So that there’re 16 different channels, so we can move things around and have a house next door to another house. We’re doing quite a few apartment buildings at this point and we’re finding it works quite well, even when you’ve one apartment right on top of another, there’s full security between them and they all tend to work quite well.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
How does ZigBee do in a Wi-Fi environment?

Eric Smith - Control4
That’s always a good interesting question too.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I guess you could ask it the other way around, how does Wi-Fi do in the ZigBee environment?

Eric Smith - Control4
My best example of all of that is this trade show actually — the Consumer Electronic Show is the worst Wi-Fi nightmare on the planet, mean if you walk over the Convention Center across the street and you set an access point in a Laptop, next to each other, they will not connect. There’s so much noise in that 2.4 Giga Hertz Wi-Fi spectrum. What’s interesting is, ZigBee is in the same spectrum, but because it uses different techniques of sending data, it works better in it. We’ve got a booth right over there in the mid of that where Wi-Fi does not work in that building and the ZigBee works great and it’s a kind of an amazing thing.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, all that prior planning and engineering is paying off now.

Eric Smith - Control4
It is and it’s — companies like Ember that have made it happen for us, we’ve been very excited about that.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, introduce a long term standard like Ethernet was, like ZigBee will be, you do a lot of engineering, thinking of scalability in the long turn and then when you first come out with products, they’re too expensive because they’ve all that functionality, multi channel, encryption, frequency this, frequency that, speed and the initial instantiation of the product that you compare that to the junky proprietary things and they look better.

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely.

Eric Smith - Control4
So, if there was Ethernet in the early 80s at 10 mega bits per second and put up a little ARCNET look better because it was much, much cheaper, it didn’t have all that rigmarole in it. Of course then it’s the networks scaled up and as the Ethernet got cheaper then the frailty of the proprietary things faded.

Eric Smith - Control4
I remember when the concept of an Ethernet card built into a computer was just absurd. I mean no one would think about building that in because how many people really need that with network anyway and so you buy a NIC card and put it in the PC and make it work together. And it was a pretty neat thing and I think it was like about 95 or 96, when I first started seeing Ethernet card standard in the PCs. And I think the problem was, as I said earlier we looked into it for control systems, but it was in the neighborhood of $80 to $90 back in 1995 to put Ethernet on a device, now it’s $5 or $6.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, the first Ethernet card I sold cost 5000.

Eric Smith - Control4
I can imagine?

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
But ZigBee has a similar problem in that. It is — because now we’re down to some $5, way below $5 single chip solutions and that’s continuing to go down. So, as the network scale up and as the Control4 networks get bigger so that the features of ZigBee are more appreciated and then as we manage at Ember to get ZigBee to be cheaper and cheaper, a little take off.

Eric Smith - Control4
Volume plays the game almost everywhere in the — we’re seeing it happened already and I think when you get to. If you go right now — Control4 sells dimmers their $99 and that honestly shocks regular people, $99 for light switch? Because they’re used to that $2 home depot that a rocker and that seems expensive, but if you look that as compared to the other technologies, they’ve historically have been the lighting systems, they were $350 - $400 and so people in this industry tend to go, “Wow, $99 dimmer? That’s just as affordable as anything I’ve ever seen.” But I do believe, we’ll get down to where they were at the $25 to $29 dimmer, which is about the price of a decent dimmer, home depot right now. If you want to go buy nice dimmer that you can put on your wall, that’s would it cost and I think that’s when it becomes ubiquitous. I think we’re on the right curve to get there.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
It’s all inevitable really just at the moment — it sort of feels like it’s coming, but it’s inevitable, it’s going to happen. Those curves always happen.

Eric Smith - Control4
The one I’d like to look at is similar I talk about is, one of our evidences that Home Automation will hit the broad market, is that rich people and regular people are the same, they want the same things, just rich people can afford them. And high-end homes tend to have these systems. They’ve been for at least for last five years most high-end homes that are being built, have a Multi-room Audio System, have a dedicated media room, have lighting control, have an integration system.

If you look back 30 years ago, how many cars had power locks and power windows? It was only the very high-end cars because it’s quite of an expensive feature. Well I just read something a couple of months ago and one the papers saying that, Apple-Ford and Chrysler aren’t going to offer crank Windows anymore because that mechanical crank is more expensive than the power window motors,” because they’ve gone into a volume now that that’s less expensive and I think we’ll get there.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Well, look at the GPS I am never going to buy a car without a GPS.

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
How long will it be before all cars have GPS in them, five years, two years, eight years?

Eric Smith - Control4
I don’t think it’s very long.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Not very long.

Eric Smith - Control4
It’s the best thing for men because we don’t have to ask for directions ever again.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, Eric, I have been — as to ensure the expert in Home Automation and I’m just the expert on networking. How do you see things rolling out over the next 10 years, so you can use our networks in your Home Automation systems?

Eric Smith - Control4
I believe the prices will go to the point in the next 10 years that most consumers, almost all consumers will have, like the same kinds of consumers that have TVs, will have Automation. I think we’re going to get there because the price points are going to get there and…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Yeah, but there’s another point, there’s price points and I take your — I’m not just agreeing, but then there’s usability points, that’s right now a lot of our systems they’re as like my Honeywell Thermostats that I have on that, which are very old. I still can’t program those things. I go through the manual pressing all those silly buttons, so when you’re going to reach a — when do you think, or have you already reached the usability price point where things take off?

Eric Smith - Control4
Well, fundamentally when you look at Home Automation, it’s about two issues. It’s about networking all devices so they talk to each other and then building up a common user interface to all those devices. And the thermostats is a very good question because programming a setback thermostat with a little cryptic buttons and keys, trying to figure out what you’re doing is almost impossible, it’s a real pain. And one of the things we do because we talk to the thermostat whether it be one that we build or someone else does, we can present that UI on your home PC, which is a much better user interface, you have a much better ability to do things on that.

Can you imagine trying to do — like buy a new computer on your thermostat, but buying it on a Web page isn’t that hard. If you can program your thermostats through a Web interface, you can give them a better user experience. If you can do it through your TV and things like that. The other things that happens, if we have a setback thermostat, I know you live somewhere it’s kind of cold, in most of the year. Most people have their thermostats setbacks so that in the evening, it turns out that sets back to heat a little bit, then brings a backup in the morning at 6:30, say, but have you ever had to catch a flight earlier than that? Did you actually reprogram your thermostat to bring out the heat? No, it’s too difficult.

But if you have an automation system, your alarm clock could be integrated to your thermostat. So, now when you set your alarm clock to wake you up an hour earlier, because you’re going to go catch a flight, they track automatically adapts to turn on 20 minutes before that wake up and that really makes a great experience for the consumer.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
I need that, absolutely. Because my situation is so bad that when Daylight Savings Times comes, we just let the heat come on an hour earlier or later depending on (voice overlap) we can figure it out.

Eric Smith - Control4
It is too difficult to program this stupid thing. It is very difficult and that’s one of the benefits of automation. And another one I’d like talk about a lot, is people say why automate things? I mean I’ve got all these separate systems, but there’re real synergies to come when you integrate the systems. The best example I can think of is, if you have a smoke detection system, that’s integrated with your heating and air conditioning system and that’s integrated with your lighting system and that’s integrated to your motorization, like motorized blinds, or garage door and that’s also integrated with your audio system, there’re some really interesting synergies that can come.

Let’s say the smoke detectors go off, when people are in a fire what kills them? It’s usually not the fire, it’s the smoke. Well, a heating air conditioning system is a perfect mover of smoke in your house, so I call it the equal opportunity killer. Doesn’t matter where the fire is in the house? The HVAC will make sure that the smoke gets to every room; it also provides fresh Oxygen. So, if the smoke detectors could immediately turn off the heating systems, the fan doesn’t blow. That has some real tangible benefit for a consumer. Usually when fires kill people tonight…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
Turning the lights on.

Eric Smith - Control4
…dark, turn the lights on. Maybe not full blast — though because it might do the fog light a whole, but bring up 20% so you don’t blind yourself in the middle of night. How about making the motorized blinds in the garage door, automatically pop open so you get quicker escapes, so you don’t have to wait for door to go. How about having the audio system announce over the house, system where the fire is? By law, all smoke detectors have to go off, even if one senses the fire, but if the audio system could say, “You know the fire downstairs in the office, or the storage room,” that would be very helpful to people getting out of the house.

Another the problem is, fire trucks come at down the street at night. It’s a little bit hard to see address numbers on a house and truthfully if the flames are coming out the roof, it’s too late. The fires usually are hidden if you could have your front porch lights and yard lights are flashing that has some real tangible benefit, that kind of shows how you feel — integrate all those systems. That really has benefit because there’s so much…

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, there’s three sort of triggers, there’s price point, there’s usability point and then there’s systemic value point to connecting everything together. Those three things are driving adoption I’m guessing.

Eric Smith - Control4
People have been looking. I’ve spoken at probably 15 conferences, where the topic was, “What’s killer app of Home Automation,” and they’re looking for the killer app, kind of like the Spreadsheet was for the PC, what’s the killer app for Automation? The challenge I think is that the killer app is the integration itself. It’s the making the things work together that is the killer app, I don’t think there’s anyone item of a Home Automation that’s going to be the reason why people buy it all by itself.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
So, that’s another benefit of standardized networking. When you have a standardized network, not only does it get cheaper more quickly because there’re a lot of people using it driving volume, but then there’s also the value of being able to connect products from many different companies together, so that you can — “Oh, there’s a light I will use ZigBee that talk to it.”

Eric Smith - Control4
Absolutely. Well, thank you Bob it’s been great talking to you and it’s been good to spend some time with you.

Bob Metcalfe - 3Com
It’s exciting being here at CES with you.

Announcer
This has been a RockyMountainVoices Podcast. Visit us on the Internet at www.rockymountainvoices.com.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: automated home, networking, Eric Smith, Control4, 3Com, Bob Metcalfe, venture capitalist, ZigBee, Smart Home, Rocky Mountain Voices

This podcast is brought to you by Rocky Mountain Voices.

Click here for transcript.

Tags: Ed Ryan, Fred Geiger, Control4, 4Sight, Rocky Mountain Voices

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