Posted by Eileen Komanecky on Thu, Jun 25, 2009 @ 01:38 PM
When people
learn that my husband and I own a home technology company that provides smart
home solutions to homeowners, I’m often asked the same question: “What is your house like?” I think some people are
hoping my answer were a little more interesting. Say, something like, “Did you
watch The Jetson’s growing up. That’s pretty much our house. Including Rosie
the robot maid.” Well, we may not
be the Jetson family, but the Komaneckys do have some pretty cool technology
working for us at our humble abode.
Here’s one
example:
Like many working
moms across America, arriving home after work is a time of mixed emotions. Sure,
it’s nice to know the work day is behind me. And being warmly greeted by my two
thrilled-to-see-me, tail-wagging dogs certainly warms my heart. But the thought
of the long list home duties that lay ahead of me can be daunting.
Specifically, preparing a dinner that satisfies everybody in the family. But since
I’m committed to that nightly ritual of reconnecting 4 individuals back into
one family that can actually communicate and enjoy each other’s company, I
persevere. And the good news is that simpleHome makes it easier.
How does simpleHome help? As a person who loves music, nothing
makes a mundane task more enjoyable for me than listening to great music as I
work. Preparing dinner night after night can qualify as such. So before I start
that process, I walk over to the kitchen in-wall touch panel and press the
button that says Cooking. Each of the buttons on touch panel was customized for
our family by simpleHome. When I press Cooking, here’s what happens: my music
favorites begin to play at the right volume, the lights are adjusted to the
levels that are just right for cooking, and the thermostat is adjusted to the
proper temperature. Through the touchpanel, I can easily access our entire
music collection, as well as internet or satellite radio. Or I can easily
switch on kitchen TV as I unwind & decompress from the work day. When it’s
time to call the family to the table, I turn back to the touch panel and press
the Dinner button. That button is programmed to adjust the music to speakers
above the dinner table, rings the “dinner bell” throughout the speakers in the
house, flashes the lights in my teenage son’s Man Cave (that’s another blog
altogether) to let him know it’s dinner time. It also adjusts & dims the
lights in the kitchen to just the way we like them when we eat dinner. The
scene is then set for our family to come together to enjoy a nice relaxing dinner
and each others company!
Posted by Mark Komanecky on Tue, Jun 09, 2009 @ 02:41 PM
The simpleHome team is looking forward to staying in touch with our clients, partners, architects and designers, custom builders, and other interested parties via our new blog. Over the last few months, we have been very busy developing our new web site and we think you will like what you see. We will continue to enhance and expand our site with more infomation on our latest projects, new partnerships, and our emerging work in the energy management area.
Our new web site is not as "flashy" as our previous one, but it will be much easier to find us on the Internet. That is because we have made it much more "search friendly" for Google and the other major search engines.
Now for a bit of news.....we are very excited to be featured in the Project Gallery section on Control4's web site. They selected simpleHome because of our work on a challenging project in rural Connecticut. You can find out more details by clicking here. As you can see, this is a example of how we can integrate smart home and home enertainment technology into an existing home--even in an almost 300 year old farmhouse.
simpleHome worked in conjunction with Control4 to equip the home of techology industry analyst Danny Briere. We installed many of our coolest features, including whole house music, whole house video, lighting control, video cameras and even a driveway sensor to alert the Briere's that someone is entering their driveway.
The Briere's home is located in a rural area of New England where milk is still delivered, so we equipped their milkbox with a Control4 sensor and they now get an alert that says "you've got milk!" One more feature the kids like....they each hear the song "Don't Worry, Be Happy" at 6:30 AM every school morning.
The Briere family is thrilled to be living in an 18th century home filled with 21st century technology!
Just a quick note on Danny Briere....he is the CEO of TeleChoice, a leading strategy and advisory firm and also the co-author of several books on home technology, including Smart Homes for Dummies, Home Theater for Dummies, and HDTV for Dummies. You can find a list of all his "Dummies" books on the Digital Dummies web site.