New technology puts everything at your fingertips
story by Marc Huminilowycz
photography by RICHARD GALLOWAY
In the classic 1968 Peter Sellers movie, The Party, a bumbling Indian actor gets into mischief with electronic technology at the extravagant home of a Hollywood movie producer. During the course of the evening, he playfully vocalizes gibberish over the whole-house intercom, triggers fountains to spew at inappropriate times and activates moving walls and furniture, creating chaos and making for great comedy.
This high-tech home was likely inspired by a Walter Cronkite TV show from a year earlier, titled The 21st Century, in which the venerable journalist explored the wired home of the future (it’s worth viewing – available on YouTube). Amazingly, much of the emerging technology predicted in 1967 – such as multi-room audio, 3D TV, home automation and round audio speakers – is mainstream today, albeit more sophisticated. For one, the desk-sized central command console has been replaced by a simple touch-screen control panel about the size of a tablet.
Catering not only to the very rich, but also to the other 99 per cent of the population, the “smart home” industry in North America has skyrocketed from an estimated $1.3 billion in 2007 to well over $10 billion today. Virtually every automated device and system you can imagine is available or in development.
Welcome to the second decade of the second millennium, when the “wired home” is a reality. Inside your home, sophisticated thermostats can sense your heating and cooling preferences and automatically program themselves to adjust the temperature accordingly.
Blinds close automatically during the day to keep the house cool and at night for privacy, opening quietly in the morning while your bathroom floor warms up. A wireless HiFi system plays “all the music on earth” in any room. Outside, keyless entry systems read the fingerprints of your family members (and up to 99 other people) to lock and unlock doors while triggering appliances and devices inside the home.
When you’re away from home, security systems interact with home lighting to give a lived-in look. Programmable sensors send you a text or email if they detect water, power outages or excessive temperatures inside. Strategically installed surveillance cameras monitor different parts of the house, allowing you to go online to see what’s going on. Best of all, you can control virtually everything remotely from the comfort of your sofa or when you’re away, via Internet, Wi-Fi, smartphone, tablet or laptop.
Sounds great; I’m in, you say – but what about the cost? And how do I wire my older home for all these amazing gizmos without the hassles of major construction? Fortunately, you don’t have to be Bill Gates or build a home from scratch in order to upgrade to the latest in home security, automation and audio/video technology. And you don’t need to go far to get it, either.
Huronia Alarms has been at the forefront of residential and business life safety products and systems in the Southern Georgian Bay region (and beyond) for over 40 years. Successfully managed by the Thorburn family since 1993, the company has solidified its security business over the years. (It was a security provider for the G8 Summit in 2010.) At the same time, Huronia added audio-video and other home automation products and services, and opened its flagship location with state-of-the-art demo/showroom at 284 Pretty River Parkway in Collingwood.
“We invite people to make an appointment to come to our showroom and to see and experience the amazing technology that’s available to them right now – like window treatments, automated lighting, HVAC controls, home theatre, surround sound systems, background music, cameras, and even landscape audio” says Cam Posch of Huronia. “It’s all here. As custom integrators, we listen to our customers’ needs and budgets, and point them in the right direction, leaving headroom for their future requirements.”
Technology doesn’t have to be expensive, says Huronia vice president Rob Thorburn. For example, a nifty device called the Nest Learning Thermostat – designed for iPad and available through Huronia – learns your heating/cooling preferences, reads the outside and inside temperatures and humidity, calculates how quickly your house heats and cools, and controls your entire HVAC system. Hook into the Internet, and you can schedule the device remotely. The result: a comfortable home and significant energy savings. The cost? About $250.
Simple home automation systems, which control lighting or music only, can be affordable. As with most technology, however, more capability and complexity means more cost, with a variety of systems and price points available. A popular system installed by Huronia, simply called “g!”, has plenty of smart features. Personalized to fit specific user lifestyles, it offers everything from simple family room control to whole-home management and remote monitoring by way of an easy-to-use, elegantly-designed touch screen at home or via iPhone, iPad, laptop or PC with an Internet connection.
The ultimate g! package is impressive. It allows users to control lighting, music, home theatre, security system, indoor climate, video monitoring, favourite photos, lawn irrigation, pool and spa. A messaging feature allows the family on the go to stay in touch via separate mailboxes and even old-school hand-written notes, always accessible via home touch screen or the Internet.
Although various WiFi (wireless) home automation systems are available, Huronia recommends hard-wiring for maximum performance, especially in new home construction. “You’d be silly not to invest in wired infrastructure when building a home,” says Rob Thorburn. “We recommend CAT6 cable in every room to accommodate all the plug-and-play devices that you want to network.” With existing homes, Thorburn emphasizes that his company’s technicians, possessing many years’ installation experience, are highly skilled at retrofitting wiring. “We inspect your home, analyze it and figure out what we can do,” he adds.
Huronia customer Dean Lockhart recently had his 24-year-old Collingwood home wired to control audio and video in different rooms. Granted, the house was undergoing significant renovations at the time, but it still required Huronia staff to “fish wiring to all the rooms.” The installation consisted of two separate A/V systems – one on the main floor and one for the lower level – including TVs, DVDs, audio and speakers, with a control centre on each floor conveniently operated by a universal remote. Fully automated alarm and fire detection systems were added at the same time.
“I’m not a technical guy, but I was completely comfortable with Huronia’s recommendations,” says Lockhart. “We’re very pleased with the work. Nothing looks out of place and the fit and finish are fantastic. We used to have three or four TVs working independently. Now one remote controls everything.”
Huronia’s Posch admits that hard-wiring is not always possible in some existing homes, although he reveals that other technology is, or soon will be available. In some cases, a network connection may be configured through a home’s existing cable. And “ethernet over powerline,” utilizing adapters plugged into household electric plugs to create networks out of electrical wiring, is fairly new technology that is not yet mainstream. Then there is WiFi, which creates a wireless network in your home, allowing you to surf the web or control home automation devices from anywhere in and around your home. While convenient, Posch advises that wireless is more complicated, not as secure and not as fast as wired, citing recent broadband research indicating that microwaves and other home appliances can interfere with download speeds, reducing them by 30 per cent.
At the other end of Collingwood, with a gorgeous showroom located at 15 Balsam Street, Scott Lovegrove of Georgian Audio Video has been catering to local audio- and video-philes for 25 years. A keen music enthusiast, he describes how audio has changed over the years, and keeps evolving. “Compared to the digital music that first emerged years ago, today’s digital audio is truly high fidelity – and high performance,” says Lovegrove. “Compressed digital audio formats of the past [such as the iPad and other MP3 devices] limited the fidelity and quality of music. Today’s audio equipment is far advanced, and it does a great job with Internet audio streaming.” He explains that digital-to-analog converters (DACs), built in to integrated pre-amplifier brands like Rotel and Bryston, can be added to any unit to create warmer, richer sound.
Lovegrove maintains that storing music in computers and iPads is “passé.” Streaming audio and video over the Internet is quickly taking over. “With cloud Internet storage (such as Apple iCloud) allowing you to access files anywhere, it’s no wonder that video and record stores are disappearing,” he says. For those wanting the ultimate home music experience, Lovegrove gives an enthusiastic thumbs-up to the epitome of wireless audio technology – the Sonos system. “It’s earth shaking!” he exclaims. “The most entertaining, easily adaptable Internet-based product on the planet.” Through the Internet, Sonos manages and plays personal digital music collections as well as Internet music services (such as SeriusXM and Pandora) and thousands of free Internet radio stations, allowing you to stream “all the music on earth” to any room in the home wirelessly via Wi-Fi.
The beauty of the system is that existing stereo, home theatre components and powered speakers can be hooked up to Sonos Connect devices to render the equipment wireless and enjoy music throughout the house – even a different song in every room, if the listener so chooses. And, there is no remote. The system is controlled with a smartphone, tablet or computer. According to Lovegrove, control is everything, and simpler is better when it comes to home technology. As its name implies, Georgian Audio Video specializes in home entertainment. The showroom is a fantasyland – spacious and impressive, with a huge selection of the latest in TV, HiFi, home theatre equipment and furniture, including surround systems, sound bars, overhead TV projectors and screens. Much of the equipment is adaptable to existing homes, with knowledgeable advice to match.
In addition to offering the latest in home audio, video and home theatre, Georgian Audio Video also sells and installs home automation technology such as Control4, a complete system that lets users monitor and manage indoor temperature, lighting, security, home theatre and more. For anyone building a new home, Lovegrove recommends not spending a fortune on cabling and wiring for the future. “A lot of it is not required, and ends up never being used,” he says. “Leave that to the experts. They know best.”
With so many home high-tech options available today (and many more in development), it is just as easy to be overly impressed as it is to get overwhelmed by the technology. When considering a smart upgrade to you home, it is important to establish your needs and wants, your home’s possibilities, your budget, and your technology comfort zone.
Fortunately, most of today’s A/V and home automation systems are designed with simplicity in mind. And local companies like Huronia Alarms and Georgian Audio Video have the knowledge and expertise to make recommendations and guide you every step of the way. What’s next? According to our local experts, in the very near future, refrigerators will create recipes based on the food ingredients you have inside. Your bathroom mirror will display today’s weather and news headlines as you shave. Thermostats will respond to real-time utility rates. You will receive text messages when washers and dryers finish their cycles or if a door or window in your house has been opened. Video conferencing will be available at home. Walter Cronkite would be very impressed. ❧
