Custom Audio Video and Home, Building or Environment Automation Brings Your Home to Life

Are you curious about how much custom audio video and home, building or environment automation can do to make your life easier? While homeowners have had a lot of home automation options for years, the business has made huge strides in integrating building systems over the past few years. Here are just a few of the scenarios you can set up using custom audio video and home, building or environment automation in a fully integrated building or home.

Systems Integration – the Heart of Home Automation

The key to home automation is the degree to which your home’s sub-systems are integrated so that they can work together. The systems that you can integrate include heating and cooling, audio/video, telephone and communications, lighting, networking, irrigation and home theater. Some of the better custom audio video and home, building or environment automation companies are even starting to integrate home appliances into the grid so that you can turn on your oven with a telephone call or start the coffee brewing from the train on your way home from work.

A company that specializes in home automation can set up your system to allow for scenarios like these:

Turn off your whole house with one button when you turn in for the night. In a fully integrated home automation system, one button will turn off all the lights in the zones you choose – the first floor and the basement lights and garage lights, for example, but leave the lights on in the hallway to light your way upstairs – arm the security system, turn on the outside lights, turn off the television and associated peripherals, close your window blinds and even alert you if any of your doors and windows are unlocked or open. Compare that to making the rounds of your house to check all the windows, turn off the lights and shut everything down. One button vs. 15 minutes – which would you rather do?

How often do you run around the house with the telephone in hand to turn down the television or audio or shut off the vacuum cleaner? You can wire your home automation system to do all of that for you. When the doorbell or telephone rings, your house can mute the audio so you don’t have to turn it down, or switch over to show you the front door camera for your security system on your television. You can set it up to flash the lights when the telephone or doorbell rings or even turn off the central vac system so that you can hear what’s going on.

Those are just a few of the possibilities capable when you arrange for consultation and wiring/pre-wire services from a company that specializes in custom audio video and home, building or environment automation. The time to bring your home into the future is now. You’ll be surprised how affordable home automaton can be.

Tips for Integrated Building or Environment Automation for Your Home

Integrated building or environment automation is a very jargon-y way of describing a situation where your building’s systems talk to each other. Getting your systems communicating with each other via an integrated building or environment automation plan can pay off with big savings in energy along with a safer, more comfortable and more enjoyable home.

The fact is that commercial construction has been integrating building automation systems for some time. The technology is there and is used for things like automatic lockdowns in public buildings, lights that shut themselves off after the last person leaves a room and toilets that flush themselves without wasting water. Much of that technology has worked its way down from the high-end commercial market into the home market at a price point that’s affordable for most homeowners. If you’re building a new home or renovating an existing one, consider these things that the home automation industry has learned along the way.

Work with an Overall Plan

For years, different technicians in entirely different industries handled the various systems that provide services for your home. You had one guy for the HVAC system, another guy for the electrical system, a third to wire the landscape lighting and sprinklers and yet another to install a home security system. And that’s all before your audio visual, cable, telephone, satellite and home network systems get involved. With all the different moving parts being manipulated by so many different people, it’s no wonder that existing buildings have issues communicating with each other.

If you’re building new or doing extensive renovations, pull in a company that does wiring/pre-wire for home automation and integration systems from the start. Setting up a “skeleton” system of wiring will make it easier to plug-and-play elements of your home systems when you’re ready to add them.

Be Involved in the Planning

The company you choose should involve you, the building owner, from the very start of the planning. In fact, the very first step in the planning should be a complete assessment of your needs and expectations: do you want integrated audio video throughout your home? What kind of user controls work best for you? Who will be using the automated systems they’re installing for you? Do you want lighting control, wireless home networking, a central media library, an integrated security access system? You should be consulted on all of those decisions – and be given all the information you need to make good decisions.

Building or environment automation systems aren’t the wave of the future. They’re here and they’re here to stay. An interconnected environmental control system will make your home more comfortable, energy efficient and enjoyable to live in.