Posts

Smart Home Wiring Management

Image
Smart home wiring management is a very important part of your smart home system especially if you have contracted a company to do this for your home. The wiring of your home is the back bone of your system and if it is done incorrectly it can lead to issues down the road including communication and reliability issues of your system. A good general rule of thumb when assessing the wiring quality of your home is if the wires look messy and unorganized then you can bet that they are and the quality of work is not where is should be to deliver a great system which is why you ultimately hired a professional. The quality of your smart home is only as good as your wiring permits.  A quality and organized wiring job can significantly reduce your service costs maintaining the system and especially important if changes are made to your system down the road. Labeling of your smart home wires are equally important to reduce time spent determining where and what various wires are for.

myCrestron Cloud Power

Image
myCrestron cloud power in a new service offered by the smart home automation company Crestron to accompany their recent IP based control system. The idea behind myCrestron  cloud power is for the smart home company to pair all their existing Crestron Pyng systems together in one space to monitor and effectively show them in the cloud with a centralized dashboard. The system dashboard will be able to alert you if a system is having an issue and with the automatic logs the Pyng system sends to the cloud. The Crestron true blue support team will also be able to help you that much easier compared to a traditional Crestron control system. Crestron also poses the idea to generate recurring revenue with the new myCrestron system. This could be in the form of a monthly system monitoring service that you could now offer to your client if you did not have an existing system in place for this service feature.  This new service will be a benefit to the clients you serve allowin

How to Wire Crestron Cresnet Connections

Image
To wire Crestron Cresnet properly you are suggested to use Crestron's standard Cresnet cabling which consists of 4 conductors to operate correctly. You will need a small flat head screw driver called a tweeker to unscrew the 4 small screws of the green phoenix connector to be able to insert your stripped back wire ends.  The Red wire is for the power of the Cresnet communication bus which is 24VAC.  The White wire is the Y communication of the RS-485 bus which is the positive side of communication pair.  The Blue wire is the Z communication of the RS-485 bus and this is the negative side of the bus pair.  Finally the Black wire is the ground side of the power pair to complete the Cresnet connections and wiring.  Once the wires are inserted into the Pheonix connector you will use your tweeker screw driver to fasten the wire to the phoenix connector as seen below in the picture to be able to connect whichever device you are hooking up.  Crestron Cre

Nest Smart Home Integration

Image
The Nest 3rd Generation thermostat is the must have smart home item that increasingly is integrate-able with many of the leading smart home control systems out in the market these days. Even if you are not running a control system to manage all your devices at your home, you can greatly benefit from this device with their stand alone app that will get you up to speed controlling your climate from your phone at home or when away from your residence. Nest can be integrated with your Control 4 system, Crestron system or even your RTI remote control system very easily. Nest is also recently controllable with your Amazon Alexa Hub via voice control. Savant systems is even soon to release their update to be able to manage your smart learning thermostat.

Sonos Home Theater

Image
The Sonos Update 5.4 arrived and included many improvement upon the Sonos sound system eco system. The Sonos user interface music experience has been enhanced to now add the upcoming track preview when in shuffle mode. There were also enhancements made for the Google Play and TuneIn music services. The Sonos Play 1 audio sonics have also been updated to improve the tonal qualities of the vocals when playing music tracks. The equalization of the Play 1 when paired with a Sonos subwoofer has been modified to allow for better performance with the Bass frequency spectrum. The Sonos home theater speaker pairing has also been updated to now work without having to hard wire a Sonos Boost which was previously required for the Sonos surround sound installation. The Boost installation can certainly still help in many installation situations, but the Sonos 5.1 surround system can now be run completely on the wireless network. Update your Sonos system to the 5.4 version today to unl