An integral part of designing the perfect home these days includes anticipating the family’s needs for lighting. The lighting system creates welcoming and livable spaces, transforming new construction or renovation into a home. Fixtures, lamps, lenses and other accessories need to answer to a wide variety of requirements, while the control system ensures the success of the design.
Lighting control creates the right balance of light for any area of the living space, while avoiding glare. Thus, the occupants can illuminate only the required rooms with lighting designed for their activities. In fact, one control system can handle lighting, HVAC, entertainment and security from integrated keypads anywhere; however, this misses perhaps the most important aspect of lighting control.
As energy becomes more costly we all need to reduce our carbon footprint and overall energy usage. Lighting control systems assist here, too. First, reduce the need for electricity by re-lamping from incandescent to more efficient compact fluorescent lamps. Control systems enable users to run fixtures at less than full capacity, extending lamp life, and reducing consumption and operating costs.
Control systems set light levels and prevent using and paying for more wattage than you need. You can also light and extinguish fixtures remotely and avoid burning lights unnecessarily. Finally, reducing your use of electricity will reduce your utility bills, especially important in today’s economic climate.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Home Technology Alliance Update
Builder and ESC Embrace the Value of Sustainable Home Technology
This edition of NAHB's quarterly HTA update is dedicated to a timely topic: green building. Enlisting the help of two design and build industry veterans, we explore their forays into this evolving field, and share with you their experiences, from applicable lessons learned to their opinions about future developments.
Our featured builder this month, John Wesley Miller, chairman of the John Wesley Miller Companies in Tucson, Ariz. recently became the first builder to qualify for certification under the new National Green Building Standards. Our featured electronic systems contractor (ESC) is Gordon van Zuiden, CEDIA board member and president/owner of cyberManor, a company that has set the standards for incorporating sustainable technology into residential building and remodeling projects. Both the builder and ESC share valuable information on this topic intended to educate you about this growing field.Read more about sustainable home technology
Monday, June 7, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Attention all Wine Enthusiasts!!
There are many ways out there for wine connoisseurs to keep track of their extensive wine collections. One of the leading wine management systems I have seen for the home is the New eSommelier.
Kiwi Audio Visual can provide you with a stand alone system or integrate it into your existing home automation system. We would be happy to discuss these options with you. Please contact us if have any questions.
The New eSommelier is easily at the top of the list with its touchscreen PC used to easily search your beautiful wine labels with a swipe of your finger. You will also be able to filter your wines by winery, vintage, country, region, variety and maturity. With the included bar code printer and scanner, anyone in your household can easily add a new vintage, organize the collection, and pull a wine to pair with dinner. Your personal wine consultant can use remote access to make buying, selling and drinking recommendations. eSommelier also provides on-site services to help organize collections and give training on how to use the system.
Kiwi Audio Visual can provide you with a stand alone system or integrate it into your existing home automation system. We would be happy to discuss these options with you. Please contact us if have any questions.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Ultimate Search Engine
Having the best search engine is becoming more and more important as the content grows and grows up in the cloud. The newer multimedia search engines are able to access sites like Hulu, YouTube and Boxee as well as searching through your local DVR, Network Attached Storage (NAS) and multi-disc changers. Some can even search on Amazon UnBox, Blockbuster and Netflix to rent or buy a movie or latest TV show. This means the options are growing past the basic scrolling TV guide on channel 99 and reaching out to endless reaches of the web to find what you want, when you want it. I personally have been playing around with the beta version of the TIVO HD search engine and have been having some fun with it. I have been able to find exactly what I wanted within the first five results each and every time. This is the future of searching for content.. I still do miss the old small TV Guide sitting on the coffee table. Whatever happened to those? Are they collector items now?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
FREE! Kiwi is offering FREE Crestron programming!
www.DirecTV.com
Unfortunately, in making this change, DirecTV's music channel line-up will no longer correspond with your existing Creston remote and touchpanel preset options.
To better serve our clients, we are offering to correct this minor annoyance at no cost to you. Not only will we update your Creston remote or touchpanel DirecTV music presets for FREE, we will also update ALL CABLE CHANNEL PRESETS to ensure your listening, viewing and entire automation experience is flawless.
Schedule Your Appointment Today. To ensure your preset buttons go where they are intended, contact your sales person at (888)567-KIWI to have these quick updates performed on your system.
* Offer runs 02/10/10-03/31/10. Valid only for existing customers who purchased equipment through Kiwi Audio Visual.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Crestron + iPhone = Ultimate Control?
Crestron has an app for that! The Crestron Mobile Pro app found in the iTunes App store can be downloaded to an iPhone, iPhone 3G, and the iPod touch. It uses two different ways to communicate with your home automation system. The first and possibly more robust way is using the 3G network. This means that you can check the status of your lights in the bathroom from anywhere in the continental US (try not to remember the lack of coverage offered by AT&T) The second way is using your home wi-fi network or a hotspot at your local Starbucks. Both of these connections have their own pros and cons. Without some extensive testing, I will not be able to comment on the response time of the button presses through either of these connections. I hope to see it in action in the wild soon so more to follow.
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