Electronic Homes of 2010

Check out the homes that won this year's ElectronicHouse.com 2010 Home of the Year Awards. The talented smart wired designers and installers selected as winners tailored each home automation system to the needs and lifestyles of the respective homeowners.

Gold Winner, Best Home

The pictures say it all. Three 65-inch Panasonic plasma HDTVs, flush-mounted side-by-side, form a video wall that can display content from 18 different sources. All the TVs in this Manhattan, US, apartment are not only flushmounted in the walls, the walls even cover the TVs' bezels so only the screens remain visible. The skyline views out of the windows are pretty nice, as well.

But it was the eye candy inside this 2,400-square-foot spread that was of most concern to the homeowners - or at least the tech-savvy man of the house, whose living room man cave with its video multiplex of sources is the envy of any audio/video enthusiast.

"He had a set-up in his previous home with 12 tube TVs and a video matrix so he could watch all these different shows on them," says John Montgomery of custom electronics (CE) pro EDG of Piscataway, N.J. Needless to say, this video matrix is a huge upgrade.

The homeowner can choose among feeds from up to 24 different video sources, including 18 cable boxes (three of which have DVRs), three DVD players and three Mac minis. The sources are routed through an Extron matrix switcher and an RGB Spectrum picture-in-picture processor that multiplexes them and allows six outputs to each of the TVs. He can view 18 sources - or 18 different channels simultaneously - with six per screen or one large picture in the middle and with six options shown on each side.

Although the TVs will show 18 video feeds at a time, he can choose among all 24, says Montgomery. That includes a high-def Blu-ray player. And if he has someone over to give a presentation, he can use his Crestron touchpanel to dig a little deeper and summon the video feed from one of the Mac minis.
This tech-happy guy doesn't mind digging down through home control screens. He's a tinkerer. "He wanted it complex enough so he could go in and play around, but simple enough so his wife could come in and press one button," says Montgomery.

When the lady of this video house wishes to watch something in the living room, she indeed presses just one button, and the three 65-inch plasmas are filled with pictures from a DVR on the center screen, flanked by two of the DVD sources. Though she may opt to watch any one of the other flush-mounted TVs in the apartment.

Silver Winner, Best Home

We've got to hand it to the owner of this gorgeous part-time residence in Scottsdale, Arizona, US. He's in his late 70s and shows no signs of slowing down. Not only does he keep tabs on the North Carolina-based business he owns while he's away, but he also works on a daily basis even when he and his wife are staying in the Southwest rather than the Southeast. A big reason he has never let technology pass him by. Quite the opposite, he's turned to electronics to benefit both his business and home life.

"He wanted something really simple to use, with central controls," says Kris Kostner of local custom electronics firm Cinemagic. "He didn't really have priorities other than wanting quality speakers and good sound throughout the house. Other than that, we threw a lot of ideas out at him, and there aren't a lot of things we didn't do."

That's an understatement. The homeowners may not have specified everything they wanted automated, but they did have a good understanding of what whole-house home controls could achieve - to the point where the husband picked Control4 as the automation hub of choice. Aside from a basic request to keep audio and video as discreet as possible, the homeowners entrusted Cinemagic to devise how electronic controls could optimally enhance the residence. That meant not only audio and video, but lights, shades, heating and cooling, surveillance, swimming pool, networking and more were fair game.

The result is one of the most robust Control4 installations we've seen, which incorporates a mix of practical and playful elements befitting this 10,000-square-foot home. That's typified in the dedicated theater room, with its combination of both artistic and cinematic flair.

But the rest of the home by no means takes a back seat to the theater. The level of technology is evident before one sets foot inside. At the bottom of the driveway, the entry gate can be accessed through the Control4 automation system or the Cisco IP (Internet protocol) phone system. When someone buzzes at the call box, alerts are sent to every Control4 touchpanel in the home, and a snapshot from one of the 11 surveillance cameras is taken and transmitted. The owners can then pick up a phone and talk to the visitor on the intercom or simply press a button on the touchpanel to let him in. The gate can also open and close at preset times for hassle-free entry by gardeners and such.

As people wind their way up to this hillside home, they'll notice plenty of lighting accenting the cactus-lined driveway and the glowing exterior. Much of the outside lighting is instructed by an astronomical clock to illuminate from dusk until 10 p.m. A goodnight scene programmed into the Control4 system dims the exterior lights (and interior ones) and shuts the gate if it has been left open.

Bronze (tie) Winner, Best Home

When your living quarters are as large an airport hangar, simple tasks like turning off the lights before bedtime can be exhausting. That's part of the reason the owners of this newly built Idaho estate invested in a sophisticated control system. But operating hundreds of lighting circuits is just the tip of the home control iceberg for this slick management system.

Peppered throughout the property - which includes a guest house, barn, tennis courts, and swimming pool - are 11 flat-panel TVs, dozens of built-in speakers, 11 surveillance cameras, motorized window treatments and motorized gates. The custom electronics (CE) pros from Home Media in Ketchum, Idaho, US, tied them all to a single Apple-based control system called the Rosie from Savant Systems.

Rosie appealed both to the family and the Home Media crew. "It has the capability to seamlessly sync a wide range of systems, which gave us more time to customize the system to the family's needs," explains Home Media president Kevin Carey. For the family, Rosie permitted the use of familiar devices like iPhones to operate all the home's electronic systems. "They're also set up to use an iPad," says Carey. "That will be a device that really runs the whole show."

There are numerous other interfaces the family can use to monitor and manage the massive estate. A Savant Touch TV in the kitchen, for example, provides a 24-inch screen to view the status of the various systems, issue commands to any device, and display video from a plethora of components located in an equipment rack in the lower level.

Two smaller touchpanels - one in the master bathroom and the other in the party barn - provide the same bird's-eye view of the property. Or the family can bring up the Rosie control menu on any of the home's 11 flat panel TVs, including a Runco 103-inch plasma in the movie lounge. With the TVs, they use handheld remotes to navigate and issue commands.

Equally important to this family is the ability to visually monitor what's happening around the property. One touch brings up a floorplan of the house, where they can see the lights that are on, the position of the drapes, what doors are unlocked and which TVs and speakers are in use. This quick-peek feature is a tremendous help to the family when they're leaving the house.

"They can see at a glance what needs to be turned off or locked up before they go," says Carey. "Without that feature, it would take them an hour to check on everything." One place the owners rarely check up on, though, is the wine cellar. Located off the kitchen, it can only be accessed by entering a secret code into a wall-mounted keypad. Even if someone does crack the code, getting inside would be tough, as the door is completely hidden in the wall paneling.

It's no secret how much the Savant system has enhanced the family's lifestyle. Music and high-def video are at their fingertips. And preparing the huge house for a big event takes just a matter of seconds. They can leave in a moment's notice and tap into the surveillance cameras to check out the action on the basketball or tennis courts. It's all right there on the screen.

Bronze (tie) Winner, Best Home

They say a little information goes a long way. That couldn't be truer in this 5,800-square-foot quad-level. Numerous Crestron home control touchscreens show the owners which electronic systems are in use, where they're being used and how they're being used.

The only missing piece of data is who's using them; although that could be easily surmised by peering at the floorplan on the screen. A red flag in the playroom, for example, could indicate that the kids are watching a movie.

"If the owners see that, they know to choose a program from a different DVR if they want to watch something else in a different room," says Max Angst, systems engineer at Maxsystems in Van Nuys, Calif. Or, they could use the phone system to call the kids to the kitchen table to finish their homework.This degree of "system feedback" isn't for everyone, admits Angst. It can be a bit overwhelming to see the status of every security sensor on the first floor of your house, for example. But in this case, the owner was comfortable with the technology and felt that the more information he had about his house, and at his fingertips, the better he'd be able to manage and enjoy it.

By knowing that the shades are up in the family room, for instance, the owners can determine if the lights in that room should be switched off - and make the change from anywhere in the house. They can also figure out if a window has been left open before leaving for work by viewing the security page on any touchscreen. And there's no way someone might accidentally interrupt an important football game by blasting tunes from the whole-house audio system. The system "locks" out music in any area where a TV is in use.

Many of these schedules were programmed into the Crestron system by Maxsystems. But the owners are free to set up and tweak the routines as they see fit. "They've adjusted the levels of the lights in some of the pre-programmed scenes and created a few scenes of their own," says Angst.

This article was sourced from www.electronichouse.com