Smart Savings and Styling with @Netatmo

Smart Savings and Styling

We’ve reached that time of year again, when the heating starts to get turned on as we feel the Autumn chill. We’ve had huge advancements in thermostats in the last twenty years, from settable to programmable to now the latest wi-fi equipped heating controllers. The concept of controlling your heating from your phone definitely captured tech headlines when Nest and Hive introduced their thermostats nearly four years ago. Although app control of your heating is a great feature the biggest benefit of an intelligent thermostat is the energy saving.

Energy savings are provided by:

• automatically adjusting the temperature based on whether you’re home, away or even sleeping.

• learning your patterns when you call for heat and adjusting heating schedules automatically.

• collecting temperature information from around the home to only send heat to the rooms which need it.

Recent reports have found that the average UK home could expect to reduce energy bills by around 35% with the use of a smart, learning thermostat. The learning part is the standout feature to look for in a thermostat because more often than not the homeowner still sets the temperature too high, has the heating coming on when no one is home and doesn’t make regular changes to the schedule.

A favourite thermostat of the Customised Tech Team is the Netatmo Smart Thermostat. As well as having all the smart features now expected as standard, the Netatmo leads in the styling stakes too. The stunning design by Starck will add design flair to any home with its choice of colours. Netatmo have also embraced different methods to control your heating and offer voice control through Siri, Amazon Echo and Google Home for the ultimate in convenience. There is also an intuitive and easy to use app for your smartphone and tablet.

Netatmo have produced an easy to use energy saving calculator on their website for you to see how much you could save on your bills. Check it out and let us know what you could save.

https://www.netatmo.com/economy

Customised are certified Netatmo Pro installers and would be delighted to explain more benefits of smart heating control during the free consultations we offer. Contact us to book your appointment http://customised.uk.com/contactus

Netatmo by Starck

Social Sunday

Social Sunday

No rest for the Smart Home Blog with Speed on a Sunday. Family time took up the bulk of today but Sunday has always been a day to spend some time on all the major social media platforms getting the latest Smart Home news from the past week. Twitter is by far the easiest platform to use for detailed searches. I have a number of hashtags I regularly search for and get the tailored results I need. Instagram is my preferred social platform for searching based on location and I have several cities, towns and regions that I concentrate on. I also use Instagram for hashtag related searches just like Twitter. It’s very rare now that I will use Google for these topical and regional searches, so consider social media next time you want local or specialist results.

A spot of DIY at home today has provided us with lots of new plug outlets with USB points built in. I would thoroughly recommend, especially to new builders and renovators, to have a number of these USB equipped outlets listed in your electrical specification. Many of you would think it is quite standard to have them now but it is so often missed out. Ideal places for these charging points are bedside locations, close to where your sofa or armchairs will be in the Living Room, high level sockets in the Kitchen and Study/Office and also in the Kitchen Island. For the Island you should look at pop-up sockets with a number of USB outlets built in. Again, I have seen too many kitchens without ANY sockets on the island, never mind USB, where do you plug in your mixer or juicer? Budget around £15 to £30 for double power sockets with USB depending on brand and finish.

I caught up with the latest edition of T3 magazine and was delighted to see that one of the stars of Smart Home scooped the big Gadget of the Year prize. The Amazon Echo has been a revelation for the control of home technology using voice. It is now being demanded by our customers that their tech is controlled by Alexa. It’s fair to say that if you mention the word Alexa in conversation these days, the majority of people will know what you’re talking about. This for me highlights the dominance of Alexa and I know she is paving the path to a new way of living.

Nine minutes.....done. Look out for another blog tomorrow and do get in touch if there is a specific Smart Home topic you want covered.

Technology Breaks

Technology Breaks

The daily blog from Customised continues. I pick out some highlights from the day, tap on the keyboard for 10 minutes and post it on various platforms. Let’s do this!

This morning involved a drive up to the North Norfolk coast to assist with issues caused by a power outage at one of our clients homes. Normally everything comes back on as before when the power is restored but on this occasion a few things failed to spring to life again. It’s not uncommon for an electrical item to suffer in a power outage. We replaced a power supply, checked over the whole system and took a fresh backup of the programming. All was happy again. The client questioned the robustness but I politely reminded him that cars break down, printers die, computers crash and bulbs blow. We try not to apologise for things like this happening. There was a power cut, this item didn’t like that, we’ve fitted a new one and all is well again. In the world of technology, Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzz term, at Customised we provide a SoT service. Support of Things. Look our for a follow up blog on this topic.

In the past few months we took a business decision to abandon our spending on traditional advertising methods and embrace digital only platforms. We shifted from newspapers and magazines to social media adverts and distribution of our blogs across several websites. We are excited about working more closely now with Full Mix Marketing on new digital campaigns and have continued our relationship with Archant to work on their digital outlets. We want to create better content about Smart Homes for your mobile devices, we are developing our skills in using audio to communicate better with our audience and we have reached out to collaborators to work on some exciting projects later this year involving video and audio production.

Customised are always on the look out for fellow innovators and creators to work with in East Anglia and in London. If you want to discuss project opportunities with us or you’d like to bring our input to your plans then get in touch with Kris Gamble on kris@customised.uk.com or call 01508 528964.

TV First, Kitchen Second

TV First, Kitchen Second

It’s amazing how many customers demand that the TV’s are all set up on the day they move into their new house. I understand the request if the house is all ready to move in to and you can sit down and chill in your first few nights but if the contents of your life is still in packing boxes, the kitchen appliances are not installed and you are sleeping on a mattress in the living room then shouldn’t TV wait? Rant out.

Today I attended a technology workshop organised by CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association) and presented by the CEDIA Tech Council. It attracted an elite audience and the agenda covered a broad section of the future technology innovations and disruptions which may shape our business fortunes in the years to come. Hang tight for the era of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, connected glass and Uber-like smart home install experiences on its way.

The day ended with the installation of a new product for us, a HDanywhere 4K hub. This feature packed connected home product is used to pipe all your hidden set top boxes to the TV’s throughout your home. All your devices can be hidden from view and your favourite programs and movies are delivered over a single Cat6 cable to your screen. We chose the 4x4 version to distribute two Sky HD boxes, Apple TV and CCTV recorder to four televisions on the home. The beauty of this kind of system is that you can have a minimalist install of just your big screen on the wall and all the ugly black boxes hidden from sight.

As well as audio and video the HDanywhere mHub Pro delivers internet over the same Cat6 cable for your Smart TV and handles the remote control signals between your sofa and the boxes hidden in another part of the house. The icing on the cake though is the included app based control system for controlling all your devices and handling the switching between sources. uControl is free with the Pro system and provides an easy to use interface with an uncluttered layout to keep you in control over your set top box or media streamer. We found the installation to be a breeze and the handover to the client took minutes because the app was so well thought out and intuitive to use.

Looking ahead to next week we have projects happening in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, Kent and West London. Follow our Instagram Story to see the freshest content from Customised. Our Instagram account is @customised1.

What’s This Wire For?

Big blog push at the moment from Customised but with a slight twist. Our Smart Home Blog with Speed posts are done in minutes and are bite size portions of home tech info for you. The post is usually inspired by something that happened that day on site.

We’re at the end of a project in Surbiton that has spanned several months but has really only needed us on site for five or six days. Our commitment to the home has mainly been focused on music, TV, internet and wi-fi. We have put in our tried and trusted brands to meet the customer expectations.

Something that makes it easy to achieve a finished project with minimum drama is getting the connections in place for accepting incoming services to the home. We take time at the early days of the project to identify where the nearest British Telecom or Virgin connection is to the building. Does it come overhead from a telegraph pole, is it buried under the ground. We make sure the internal cabling is ready to get these internet carrying services to the central wiring hub we have in our projects.

For satellite and aerial services we always wire a minimum of five coaxial cables to a pre-surveyed location where the antennas will go. With these five cables in place you’ll never need to run another cable to the dish or aerial. These cables also go back to our central wiring hub and are connected into an amplifier to deliver TV in every room of the house.

As well as handling the incoming services we also wire to areas where other tech lives in the home. The alarm system will get connections for either internet or telephone. The boiler or heat pump will have an ethernet cable close by for control or system update reasons. Any access control systems for gates or doors will be provisioned for internet or telephone for smart remote control of access. It’s also not uncommon for us to wire ethernet to kitchen appliance locations for soon to be common Smart Appliances and finally we make sure the garage has a wired connection for predicted internet connectivity with our cars for software updates and remote diagnostics.

These are just some of the cables we run in the home. If you’d like to know more about what wires a renovated or new build home should have then drop us a message or phone call.

Wired Wins Every Time

Wired Wins Every Time

Wednesday morning and another Smart Home Blog with Speed. I attended a late night appointment for a client last night, it’s a recent project we completed, fairly large home with a good amount of pre-wiring of Cat6 and coaxial cabling. Last night that cabling came into play.

Sky TV had sent an engineer round to install and setup a Sky Q box with 3 Sky Mini boxes system. The main Living Room had the Q main box and the other boxes for Mini boxes were for multi-room and TV in other rooms. The Sky engineer connected the main box to the Living Room TV and connected the device to the home wi-fi. The Mini boxes are then meant to wirelessly connect to the Q box to receive their content but none of them were able to because of the construction of the house and distance between devices. Modern construction and insulation methods are not conducive to wi-fi signal strength. The Sky engineer tried in vain to get a connection and installed a number of wireless boost boxes to get it working. The client was not enamoured about this wireless setup and called us to come and connect it to the wired network. Sky would not attempt this.

All our projects benefit from labelled and clearly identifiable network outlets at all TV locations. As a general rule we would always install a minimum of two network cables at every TV point, as well as coaxial cable.

We wired the main Q box via Ethernet cable and disabled all wi-fi functions built in to the box. We then wired in the three Mini boxes and also disabled their wi-fi output. The system synchronised all the boxes in less than one hour and the Sky Q system is now hard wired together and will not be susceptible to poor wireless signal strength and outages if the boosters are unplugged.

The final message in this blog is; wired wins every time. If you are building or renovating a property and have not got Cat6 wiring going into the infrastructure of the home then you are wiring the property no different from a house wired in 1990. We wire for 2020 and beyond. Wired wins every time.

Stand Out From The Crowd

Stand Out From The Crowd

A new build filled EDP Property supplement this week has fuelled my need to get this blog out as soon as possible. Many articles in the weekly newspaper talked about the shortfall in new homes being built and the targets being set for the future show no sign of being met. The powers that be need to address this issue as the housing future doesn’t look good for an expanding population. I could easily roll into a blog about timber frame versus brick and block or off-site construction versus traditional methods but I’ll leave that to Ron Beattie and the like to fight that battle. What caught my attention this week and many other weeks is the carbon copy specification of all these new build developments in Norfolk and the biggest feature they are all omitting. Smart Home.

This week I attended the exciting Talking Tech event in Norwich organised by Norfolk Chamber of Commerce. It was a thrill to be part of this annual event which celebrates and promotes the technology advancement of Norwich and Norfolk. We should all be proud of the exponential growth of our local Tech City. So doesn’t it make sense that new build Norfolk homes should ride the technology wave and show the rest of the United Kingdom building community how a home should be built for the future?

The standard new home features appear to be zoned heating, integrated kitchen appliances and a double garage for the larger properties. Exciting as that might be to buyers they’re hardly difference makers when buyers are comparing properties. Technology services plays a big part in the decision process these days. How fast is the broadband in the area? Is there a good 3G or 4G service in the area? Having access to super-fast home and mobile internet is essential for every age group of buyer. Giving them some technology in the home to control with their phones will be an appealing feature to customers.

Recently I visited a trade convention in Southern California and had the opportunity to speak with home builders and technology installers and spotted startling differences between the specification of UK homes compared to the US market. Big name home builders are making Smart Home living a standard part of new construction homes. Features like voice controllable lighting and heating are pre-installed, homes are Wi-Fi friendly with wireless equipment being pre-installed and the biggest sales tactic employed by the developers is the labelling of the homes that they Work with Apple or Work with Amazon Alexa or Work with Google.

Endorsing that your new builds work with the biggest names in technology is sure to be an enormous benefit to home buyers. Individuals and families are armed to the teeth with Smart products and the next home they buy must be ready for the now standard 20+ devices they possess. Could you be one of East Anglia’s first developers to truly build homes for the future?

Building a Smart Home isn’t the major challenge it once was. Many of you might still have preconceptions or past experiences of home technology systems needing unfamiliar wiring and reliance on specialist tradespeople. You’ll be delighted to hear that because the likes of Google, Apple and Amazon are involved the complexity is reduced and wireless technology is the backbone of new Smart Home platforms.

I’ll end this blog with an example sentence I’m hoping to see in the New Homes section soon.

 Features for Smart Home living include intelligent thermostats, smart doorbell, whole home wi-fi and voice controlled lighting. Our homes Work with Google, Amazon and Apple products.

I can picture the thumbs up emojis being messaged between your buyers now! Don’t delay, make the first move today to stand out from the crowd. Your future buyers live smart.

Customised are your local home technology professionals.

Amazon + CEDIA = Volume

I did not think that my post CEDIA Expo blog would take this long to make it online. Classic delays have been a factor; catching up on work done whilst away, following up on a mini backlog of emails and letting the news of Amazon Home Services and CEDIA linking up fully sink in.

Every industry forum, news outlet and messaging group has dissected the pairing since the news broke. I’ve read and commented in many outlets but have held off some comments until I penned this blog.

If this announcement is not the biggest wake up call for home technology installers then they must be in a deep sleep.

Amazon + CEDIA is a combination that could not be better for homeowners. Over the past three or four years there has been an enormous surge in Do It Yourself (DIY), self installed home technology products. Nest started the trend with their iconic thermostat and since then Ring, Philips Hue and August have become part of the Smart Home gadget establishment. Single, one off tech additions were manageable for homeowners and once one pain point in the home was solved by an app controllable device lots of other bug bears were up for review. Smart home tech is fast becoming the preferred problem solver for the tech savvy homeowner.

After adopting the first generation of smart home instruments the new challenge homeowners are facing is getting their tech purchases to work with each other and they’re now faced with a choice of platforms for their devices to sit on. These kind of platform choices and integration combination are second nature to a home technology professional. I know from speaking to a lot to consumers, customers, family members and friends who are buying these gadgets is that they already feel like they are slipping behind with getting their tech to integrate with each other and they feel like they aren’t getting the full experience available.

It would be romantic to think that the homeowner is going to jump on their laptop and spend many minutes tracking down their local home technology pro on Google or CEDIA.org. It would be fantastic if homeowners were actually taking the time to trawl through the net to track down a home tech dealer. I hate to break it to you….they aren’t. It takes too long, it isn’t easy to find a pro and it doesn’t guarantee you’ll find the technologist you need.

Here’s the alternative chain of events. They can’t get Nest Protect to communicate with their Hue lightbulbs. Inside the app that they use for Hue or Nest there is a Support or Help button that will guide them through the integration. They got it working on their own. The next device they buy on Amazon or at the Apple Store arrives at home and they try to install it themselves and they run into difficulties. They still don’t hit Google search for a CEDIA member, they look in the box and it tells them to go to Nest Pro or Yale Installer or Logitech Pro. They will find a local expert to help them. They want their technology to work in the way it was intended. Your business should be attached to these Pro programs to get local attention.

An even quicker way to request services today is by using a voice assistant. A shout out to Siri, Alexa or Google can find a home service provider in seconds. This is probably the easiest way to find a local expert. A quick session with my own Alexa device provides lots of local electricians, plumbers, painters and tilers but zero results for a home technology professional or a CEDIA member. Voice search has a really difficult time understand the term CEDIA, it usually comes up with Seedier or Cydia. I think CEDIA need to do a lot more to make their brand recognised and searched for using voice.

However, if you ask for a home technology expert or home technology services or a home technology professional then CEDIA does come up using a Google voice search. Even more interesting was that the top result for this voice search was for Amazon Home Services. This is where the blog goes full circle. One in every four searches on a mobile device uses voices. 1 in 4! Amazon will be the top hit when a home service is searched for. CEDIA have now been accepted into the Amazon framework, Amazon have identified CEDIA members as trusted providers of home tech services. Amazon are boosting brand CEDIA, Amazon will start to be the marketing and PR arm of thousands of home technology professionals, Amazon is where you will list your business to get the best SEO results and Amazon will make the CEDIA name a recognised voice search term.

I’m going to keep testing Alexa and Google to see when she recognises CEDIA. I’m going to work on optimising my company to appear in an Alexa search, I’m going to start working on an Alexa skill for my company. I’m interested in hearing from other home technology professionals about a collaborative skill for Home Tech searches. Google fear Alexa, Alexa searches are the buzz thing. Amazon will drag CEDIA members into the world of on demand work requests and pull them into the Do It For Me world at scale.

Amazon + CEDIA = Volume

Day 4 at #CEDIA17 with Customised

CEDIA Day 4 - UK Misses Out For Now

I’ve set myself a challenge during this years CEDIA Show in San Diego. I’ve got to get a blog out every day of the show.

The CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) industry has taken it’s annual EXPO to San Diego this year and has literally taken over the Gaslamp and Convention Centre areas of this coastal gem in California. CEDIA 2017 is a 100% dedicated to Home Technology show running between 5th and 9th of September. Over 500 exhibitors and 150 training courses are available to visitors to the show.

Saturday was billed as the quiet day of the show, lots of visitors will be going back home for the weekend and it’s the day which exhibitors use to see the show after the rush of the previous days. For me Saturday was the day I got to spend the most time with exhibitors. I also revisited some of the booths from my first day at the show.

Portal had a great destination booth to visit at the show. Great visual aids to convey the service and really helpful staff. Portal is an aggregator of all your suppliers in one platform. You can build your quotations and proposals within Portal and once accepted can start the order process from the same platform. Portal will separately raise the purchase orders from your preferred suppliers. Although heavily focused on the US market, the staff at Portal seemed undeterred about working with myself and UK suppliers to get this working for Customised and others on the other side of the pond. Watch this space.

Wi-Fi is the invisible infrastructure that ties a lot of our home technology together in our projects and there was a strong presence from several manufacturers of wireless networking equipment. I spent time quizzing Ubiquiti about new products launching and can confirm a higher capacity Network Video Recorder is coming to the UK very soon. Eero are not a brand we can get hold of in the UK but it was neat to see their mesh system no with the launch of POE, a global standard for powering devices using network cable, compatible devices then it won’t be long before we see this featuring in UK installations. TP-Link, Hewlett Packard and Netgear all showed off mesh wi-fi systems at the show.

As I headed for the exit doors at the show, I spied a tiny Logitech Harmony display on a booth by ADI. I had no idea who ADI were prior to the show as they are not in the UK but I had to take a quick look at the Harmony Pro remote control and hub, currently not available in the UK. The Hub benefits from an improved IR distribution kit and better remote access features for Harmony professional dealers. Logitech Harmony have launched a new Pro portal on their website packed with support, e-learning and marketing assets. UK Installers can sign up for the Pro service but will have to wait for the Harmony Pro remote. Be patient, it’s coming.

My trip to CEDIA 2017 will be a significant milestone in the Customised journey and I’ve gathered so much experience and knowledge from the trip. It was so good to meet with old friends and make some long lasting new ones. I’ll be back next year to create another milestone.

Look out for the effects it’s going to have on services and communication from Customised by finding us and following us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Also, let me know if you want any particular topics tackled in our blogs.

See you next year San Diego.

Day 3 at #CEDIA17 with Customised

CEDIA Day 3 - Sonos Can't Win

I’ve set myself a challenge during this years CEDIA Show in San Diego. I’ve got to get a blog out every day of the show.

The CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) industry has taken it’s annual EXPO to San Diego this year and has literally taken over the Gaslamp and Convention Centre areas of this coastal gem in California. CEDIA 2017 is a 100% dedicated to Home Technology show running between 5th and 9th of September. Over 500 exhibitors and 150 training courses are available to visitors to the show.

Friday was the standout day of the show, crowd numbers swelled, excitement peaked and the weekend was starting. Friday was my Sonos day. I attended the Sonos 101 seminar at the convention centre in the morning and then ended the day with a visit to the Sonos Loft outside in the vibrant Gaslamp area of the city.

Sonos are the coolest cats at CEDIA, they know, we know it. Whilst typing up this blog a video criticising Sonos at CEDIA has surfaced on social media, I kind of get why the tweeter was blasting them online but if he had the opportunity to see the effort Sonos made in their Loft in Gaslamp then I’m not sure he would have posted his short video. Sonos probably aren't loosing sleep over the criticism.

In between Sonos commitments I got to have a close look at the latest product and service launches from Samsung, Krika and Hogar Controls.

Samsung showcased the new Frame televisions. Frame couples the latest TV technology with beautiful artwork encased in customisable TV frames. When your not watching TV, the Frame reverts to being your favourite artwork. The display reacts to ambient light to dim as the room lighting changes to retain a realistic painting like display. Samsung have a great artwork collection you can access and you can choose several frame finishing. Go and find this cutting edge television online.

Krika have a long heritage in remote monitoring of your installations network devices and at CEDIA they announced their Krika Concierge service, which probably can’t launch soon enough for some installers. Krika Concierge are going to handle your initial technical support calls and queries from your customers, assisting them in remedying issues without the installer having to get involved. They will aim to resolve issues as a first responder but if necessary escalate it to a service visit from your team if advanced or in home support is required. Krika Concierge has different service plans available to installation businesses. Track them down on social media to get more information.

Hogar Controls were long term targets from my pre-show planning. Their participation in the Z-Wave Alliance area hid a compatibility with Apple HomeKit but I found it in my pre-show investigation. Hogar make a stylish range of products which give elegant control of lighting from a wall switch or wireless button. Their switches are finished with a glass faceplate and metallic trim around the edge with control provided by touch sensitive buttons behind the glass exterior. The communication with your Apple Home is via a Hub and this is the part which works with Apple HomeKit. We’re going to get some of these switches and a hub for testing very soon so look out for tweets or Instagram posts when I get my hands on them.

An evening reception with CEDIA closed Day 3 at the show and it was an excellent opportunity to network with other CEDIA members based around the globe.

Day 4 is my last day at the show and it's going to be a mad dash to tick off all the things I wanted to see.

Follow the Customised Story at CEDIA 2017 on Instagram, search for @customised1.