Press – Old Version (post-based)

cyberManor entered into an agreement with Brookfield Residential last year to provide the Discovery, Consulting, and Design/Engineering for the Avendale Alexa Enabled Model home in Bristow, Virginia.

In the discovery phase cyberManor discussed business model ideas (i.e. good, better, best packages), Brookfield Residential’s current partnerships/strategic relationships, hardware/software/platform likes/dislikes, physical constraints, budget, network preferences, etc. Based on the results of the discovery phase cyberManor started the process of recommending platform(s), endpoint devices, realistic expectation setting, and draft scenarios based on currently available skills/hardware/software.

cyberManor followed up with the design/engineering phase of the project where we prepared system drawings and documentation based on the above-agreed direction. When the design/engineering documents were completed they were given to Energy Squad who provided the local integration of this project. cyberManor continued to provide remote support to Energy Squad during the install and setup phases.

We are excited to announce that the Alexa Enabled Model Smart Home had its great opening on February 2nd. View details on our Brookfield Residential Smart Home Open House.

At the recent May Connections Conference in San Francisco I listened to Amazon’s David Isbitiski deliver a keynote talk on Accelerating Smart Home Adoption through Voice Control and Alexa.

The main point of his talk was that voice control is breaking into the smart home market in a big way. Using voice as a device and application interface enables customers to interact with smart home devices in a more intuitive way than touch screen controls. David called this the dawn of the post-app era of consumer engagement. A couple of days after David gave his keynote talk Michael Wolf blogged in his Next Market website that the epicenter of new technology innovation has moved beyond mobile devices such as smartphones to the things and systems that surround us. This shift is bringing new interfaces which to access those things, and the AI and machine learning layers are being built into and around those things.

Mike goes on to say that Amazon saw the opportunity to layer voice into a device designed for the home, with important feature sets like advanced far-field listening capabilities. They also saw voice as the right interface to tap into a fairly open AI development platform in Alexa, with which they’ve actively been fostering a rapidly growing ecosystem of developers to build out the Skills library.

“Amazon has started to do with it’s voice and AI platform what Apple did with its apps. Apple helped us all think differently about apps and let us see the potential, and now Amazon is doing the same with voice and AI. The Alexa Skills marketplace is really just the first scaled app store for voice and AI.”

In my opinion that last sentence says it all. The overwhelming success of the Apple iOS platform is courtesy of all the developers that have enhanced the smart phone and tablets to do the thousands of tasks that we use everyday – and iOS based home control apps are critical to the success of almost all of the home solutions that custom integrators support. When Apple launched their app based iPad in 2010 it almost overnight become the de facto touch screen for home control – replacing the proprietary non-app based touch screens our industry had been deploying from the total home control companies. Today we are witnessing the same paradigm shift in primary user control preferences away from app based touch screens to voice becoming the primary user interface. But voice control has been around for a long time – so why now? – and why is it happening so quickly?

The Amazon Echo product launched in the summer of 2015 (developed inside its Lab126 offices in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, Mass. since at least 2010) has been a critical factor in the success of voice for home control. There are several key design factors that have contributed to its tremendous success, specifically:

For all the benefits of voice control in the home there are still some significant limitations. In the ideal world the syntax of voice control would be as simple as being in the kitchen and saying “turn on the lights”. But in today’s far field listening world of Amazon Echo we still need to use the following command “Alexa, tell Lutron to turn on the lights in the kitchen”. Not exactly as intuitive as “turn on the lights” if we have to first give a name, than the manufacturer’s product name, and then the zone we are in. When I want to turn on the Rachio sprinklers by voice I have to say “Alexa, tell Rachio to turn Zone 3 on for 5 minutes”. Most of our clients would not know they have a Rachio IP based sprinkler system or what Zone 3 is referring to. Ideally we would be outside in the yard – see that the roses need water and say “water the roses for 5 minutes”.

But all of these limitations are being worked on. Josh.ai, for example, eliminates the need to start a command with Alexa (but natively uses a push to talk listening technique – not as versatile as far field listening). Additionally, Simple Control and Josh.ai (which will be launching later this summer), now have Echo supported voice enabled control for Lutron RadioRA2 and Sonos. Josh.ai will allow you to say multiple commands at once, such as saying “Turn off the lights in the kitchen, lower the shades in the living room, and play Adele throughout the house” all in one command. Amazon is also working on tying room information to the Amazon Echo microphones that we place around the home so that a command heard from the kitchen based Amazon Echo would assume the command was for a kitchen based action unless told otherwise.

There are other issues with voice based control as well. We wouldn’t want just anyone to say “Alexa, open the front door” and if other family members are trying to rest then using your voice to wake up Alexa would probably wake your other family members. And why would you use voice control to look at your security cameras when you need a screen in your hand to view them – you may as well use the app to initiate this action. Additionally, with the Amazon Echo implementation of voice control from the cloud – if your Internet is down so is your home control. There will still be a need for the brains of our home control systems to reside in the home for the foreseeable future. Their services will be mirrored to the cloud but not exclusively reside in the cloud. For all of these reasons, and probably many more, the screen based app world with local home control processing that we live in now is not going away soon. Nevertheless, touch screens will no longer be the primary user interface that we use in the home – it will be voice.

To date, the Amazon Echo product has over 37,000 reviews on the Amazon store and 1/3 of them have the word “love” in the review. How many of our clients “love” the products that we install for them? With this level of emotion attached to a technology product we have to be aware of its impact to our industry.

Are you prepared to provide the answers and the solutions for your clients when they ask what about voice control for their home?

We are very excited to launch our SMART HOME MAGAZINE. The goal of this magazine is to help our clients and builder partners better understand the connected home technologies that are available to enrich the way you live, work and play in your home using existing smart phones, tablets, smart watches or TVs.

The solutions and columns in this magazine are based on cyberManor’s experience with these app based solutions for the hundreds of clients that we have served for over the last twenty years. Our featured column showcases what we believe are the best of breed whole house audio, TV and movies, comfort and well being, security and access control solutions for the home. These are not total home control systems that require extensive and ongoing customized programming. They are systems and solutions that have a proven history of reliability, ease of use, and innovation to provide exceptional whole house audio, TV, lighting control, and security experiences. We also review the importance of planning and construction documentation for home technology solutions. At our new cyberManor Home Technology Center we will be reviewing the best of these new technologies and upgrading our own showroom home to give existing and potential clients the opportunity to experience these new entertainment, comfort, and security solutions.

It’s a very exciting time to be involved in home technology. We hope this issue of our SMART HOME MAGAZINE gives you some great new ideas on how to use these innovative app based products and solutions to enhance your new or existing home.

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Almost a century ago General Electric sent a magazine called the The HOME of a HUNDRED COMFORTS (as shown below) to homeowners in the 1920’s to describe the benefits of a well planned, whole house electrical wiring infrastructure for the early 20th century smart, modern home.

Today we discuss the benefits of a properly planned low voltage wiring infrastructure, one that allows networked devices to connect to a high speed network backbone and the internet cloud. Once again history repeats itself – but now whole house low voltage structured wiring is critically important in today’s smart, modern home. cyberManor’s one room schoolhouse (which in the 1920’s displayed the best of high voltage electronic solutions) is now a live showroom for the modern conveniences provided by networked low voltage products and solutions – we call it our 21st century HOME of a HUNDRED NETWORKED COMFORTS!

2022 Column on the Apple Watch
In 2015 I wrote the column below about the potential for the newly introduced Apple Watch for the custom integration channel. It was a little premature. In April of 2022 I updated my thoughts using the latest version of the Apple Watch in this column for Residential Systems Magazine.

2015 Column on the Apple Watch
I have owned my new black sports band Apple Watch for a short time and have developed some first impressions on what I think its impact will be to our clients and the custom electronics industry. Unlike the Apple touchscreen products that preceded the watch, the phone and the iPad – the Watch’s immediate role in home control and automation is not nearly as clear. When the iPhone was introduced it was evident to most custom manufacturers in the residential home control space that this platform would have an immediate impact on how customers would want to control their home’s music, televisions, lighting, security systems, and heating and cooling systems. Over time, and with the growth of the Internet of things the iOS and Android smart phones also became a remote control point for sprinkler systems, door locks, and swimming pool and hot tub controls. When the iPad was introduced about three years after the smartphone it was also obvious that this high resolution, large real estate touchscreen could serve as a useful control interface in the home. When you want to see and control multiple home zones, multiple control systems, and add high resolution graphic images the added screen real estate of an iPad becomes very useful. Even the iPad mini found a niche for certain rooms and home control applications.

But the immediate impact of the Apple Watch on home control is not as evident. It is most likely the reason that some large players in our industry are still on the sidelines with respect to their Apple Watch software development. Crestron and Savant are committed to the new platform while we have not seen anything yet from Control4. Sonos and NEST are also conspicuously absent but Lutron does have Apple Watch control. Interestingly enough – when leading companies such as Sonos and NEST don’t provide smart watch control of their products enterprising third party companies are there to sell their Apple Watch control software to fill this void – even if it is a temporary one. ZonePlay and Kronos make a pretty good Apple Watch Sonos controller, NEST App and NestControl make an Apple Watch NEST controller and the Drip app allows you to view your Dropcams on the watch.

One of the key considerations for using the Apple Watch for home and remote control is its usability compared to the smartphone interface. In the smartphone world we can get immediate access to our home control apps by launching one unified home controller app (like Savant, Crestron, or Control4) or by opening a home control folder that contains all the individual home control apps (like Sonos, Lutron, and NEST). We can access these apps quickly and interface with them intuitively. The watch interface needs to have this same (or better) level of interaction with our home systems to be useful over the long term. A key software feature of the Apple Watch OS that provides a level of seamless interaction for the control of home systems is a feature called Glances. With Glances you can easily sweep away the clock interface of the watch to view your front door camera, one more swipe and you can arm or disarm the home, one more swipe and you can control the Sonos whole house music system, and one more swipe lets you control your Apple TV. These swipe actions are very easy and intuitive to learn and invoke – Watch apps that support glances are great candidates for home control – those that do not are much more limiting. The problem is that opening an app on an Apple Watch requires a level of precision finger pointing in order to launch a very small app icon. If you miss the app you launch the wrong one. In addition the watch screen can become quickly crowded with app icons making them difficult to find. You can’t create folders for home control apps on the watch screen interface (but you can move them together to find them a little more easily).

My strong suggestion to our clients and custom integrators that are beginning to deploy Apple Watch home control applications is to select the top 4 or 5 control features you want to deploy and include them in the glance-able screens of the watch. All other secondary control features should be left as watch applications.

There is another factor that has inhibited our industry’s rapid embrace of the Apple Watch for control as well – specifically that most apps on the watch need to be wirelessly tethered to a nearby iPhone and the apps generally do not run that fast on the Watch. But that promises to change this fall as Apple recently announced at the June Developer Conference that the new Watch OS2 operating system will allow developers to write apps that can run native on the watch without the use of the phone – and run much more quickly.

I predict that many hardware manufacturers that have not yet released a watch app will do so now that Watch OS2 is available. And just as each iOS release gave clients a richer smartphone experience expect the same in the smart watch space. The Watch app wave will also continue to build momentum. When Apple first introduced the Watch they announced there were over 3000 apps already written for the watch. A few months later that number has crossed over 5000 – expect that by the end of the year this number will be over 10,000. Of those apps many will be in the home control space. (For a great overview of all the home control apps now available for the Apple Watch you please visit www.watchaware.com).

Its also important to note that the watch has some very unique experiences that will find their way into the home control experience. Haptic response is one of those experiences – if you forget to arm your home when you leave or close the garage door your Watch will vibrate on your wrist with this reminder. Siri and voice control will become a more important feature for home control. As products begin to roll out under the Apple HomeKit umbrella we can expect to see the Siri voice functionality of the Watch enable commands such as turning on and off lights or opening and closing door locks. As the Watch apps embrace location awareness expect their usefulness to increase as well. Imagine walking into a Sonos audio zone where the Watch knows that you are in the kitchen zone and you can immediately bring up the kitchen Sonos audio interface on your watch to adjust the volume and music content in this room – no more fumbling through rooms to figure out which one you are in.

Finally we need to understand how the Watch is beginning to replace the keys and wallet in your pocket. If we use its near field and bluetooth communications capability for financial payments (Apple Pay) and to open locked doors in our home, car, or even hotel rooms, then the watch will become a much more useful device on our wrist. And the more we use if for payment and key functions – the more we are likely to use it for home control functionality.

The Apple Watch will clearly have an impact on our clients and the custom electronics industry – but unlike the smart phone and tablet devices it will take some time before it becomes as ubiquitous as these devices are now for home control. But Apple will keep improving this platform, manufacturers will keep improving their watch software, and consumers will become increasingly comfortable with this new touchscreen interface. We sell custom integrated and control solutions to our clients – and the Apple Watch will become part of that solution.