Smart Home San Diego installation with Lutron Caseta lighting, RTI universal remote app and Nest thermostat

The term “Smart Home” is everywhere today. However, depending on who you talk to, the definition of “Smart Home” can have many meanings. Here’s our take on “Smart Homes”, how to get one for yourself and some of the pieces and parts that make up this category.

We’ll cover three types of Smart Home solutions. These will be:

Smart Home DIY: These are products for people that would like to install some of these smart home conveniences on their own. We love DIY! (with limits…see below) so we carry many of these products for this reason.

Smart Home Installation LIGHT: These Smart Home solutions provide home automation solutions for audio, video, lighting, climate and more.

Smart Home Installation GENIUS: This type of installation is truly intuitive where your home environment changes automatically as you move from room-to-room…read on!

Smart Home DIY

What’s great about DIY smart home products is that they are prevalent now whereas 5 years ago this category didn’t exist. Some of these solutions offer price-points 1/10^th of what they used to be. This allows you to experience comforts such as front door cameras, whole-house lighting control, whole-house music, room-to-room intercoms and more. Some of these brands and solutions are:

Sonos: This wireless music solution provides a ton of today’s music apps, easy set-up and good sound utilizing your existing WiFi.

http://www.airetheaterdesigns.com/blog/itemlist/tag/sonos

Lutron Caseta: This whole-house lighting control allows you to control the lights in your house ALL with a single touch. You can also have your lighting system do things like automatically turn on when you pull into your driveway, turn on/off at specific times of the day and more.

http://www.airetheaterdesigns.com/blog/item/153-san-diego-home-automation

Nest Thermostats: Hate coming home to a 90 degree house in summer? Like the idea of turning your AC on BEFORE you get home? Nest thermostats allow for this! They also help to save money by automatically turning off when no one is in a specific area.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXG4FuqDvmt/?hl=en

Yale doorlocks: Want to open the door for a babysitter or houseguest while you’re at work? How about knowing when people go in-and-out of a particular door? Add Yale WiFi locks for some awesome home automation capabilities!

Here are some of the possible issues with Smart Home DIY products.

1. WiFi Network congestion: Most smart home DIY products utilize WiFi to communicate. The more products you have, the more difficult is for ALL of your WiFi devices (including iPads, computers, etc.) to communicate. Optimizing your WiFi network is crucial if you want all of your WiFi devices to play nicely.
2. Capabilities: These products are inexpensive and are meant for a here-and-there DIY solution. Got one door that you’d like to add a WiFi lock to? Sounds great! Got 20 doors? Not a good solution. Want to add 100 wireless Lutron light dimmers? Don’t go DIY. These solutions are NOT meant for large homes and encompassing solutions.
3. Lack of robust WiFi network: Your off-the-shelf or cable-supplied modem/router is not a god choice if you want to cover your home with DIY solutions. See our blog post about better WiFi networks.

http://www.airetheaterdesigns.com/blog/item/213-better-wifi-san-diego

Smart Home Installation LIGHT

This is the type of Smart Home installation that we perform for most of our clients. This makes up solutions such as universal remotes that control your surround sound and TV, seamless whole-house lighting control, whole-house music, climate control, etc. The big difference between Smart Home DIY and Smart Home Installation LIGHT is that with the latter, all of these Smart Home elements work in tandem as opposed to having to

1. Elements work in tandem: Smart Home DIY elements are all separate apps. If you like opening 10 different apps to control your house, DIY may work for you. However, if you prefer (which most people do) having ONE screen that allows you to access Lutron lighting WHILE controlling your audio/visual system WHILE seeing who is at the front door WHILE controlling your Nest thermostat, our installed smart home solution may be for you.
2. Robust smart home products: The products that we use for our Smart Home solutions are typically more robust and better-built than the DIY counterparts. This provides much better reliability that DIY products can’t match.
3. Better CONTROL: Ever have a universal remote that doesn’t work? That’s one difference between a DIY product and an installed, professional model which works EVERY time. All of our Smart Home Installation products are engineered with control protocols. These allow us to program these devices to behave correctly. This helps to simplify your audio, video and home automation devices. See post below for details.

http://www.airetheaterdesigns.com/blog/item/176-harmony-vs-urc-san-diego-universal-remote

Smart Home Installation GENIUS

Smart Home Installation GENIUS systems are truly a smart home where your house (equipped with our programming and products) “knows” what is going on as you go from room-to-room. Do you and your significant other like different music? Your Smart Home knows this and turns on different music for each of you as you enter the room. Want your TVs to display art when you walk in the room and turn it off when you leave? How about when you pull up in your driveway, your favorite music comes on, the temperature and lighting changes and the Jacuzzi jets turn on? Smart Home installations at the GENIUS level do this and more.

Smart Home GENIUS installations also use one app to control all of your household systems. Do you want to go in-and-out of your audio/video app to control your TV, lighting app for your whole-house lighting control, security app to see your CCTV cameras, pool app to turn your Jacuzzi on, etc.? If you have a Smart Home GENIUS installation, you don’t have to.

Smart Home Installation San Diego

Got questions about Smart Homes San Diego? We’ve installed these types of Smart Home products in thousands of homes over the last 12 years. Give us a call and let San Diego’s smart home experts guide you in your quest to have the smartest home on the block.

Looking for smart home products San Diego? Aire Theater Designs proudly serves all of San Diego County which includes Del Cerro, Talmadge, Kensington, Hillcrest, Mission Valley, Fashion Valley, El Cajon, Blossom Valley, La Mesa, Lake Murray, Friars, North Park, Balboa Park, Clairemont, Kearny Mesa, Mission Bay, Mission Beach, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, Imperial Beach, Pt Loma and Downtown San Diego. We also gladly serve those in North San Diego County which includes Carlsbad, San Marcos, Vista, Elfin Forest, Oceanside, Escondido, Encinitas, Cardiff by the Sea, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Alta Del Mar, 4S Ranch, Santaluz, Torrey Pines, Carmel Valley, Carmel Mountain, Coronado, Fairbanks Ranch, La Jolla, Poway, and Rancho Bernardo. Need help in Murrieta, Wildomar, Temecula, Fallbrook or Bonsall...we're there too. House by Lennar, Shea, Pardee or other builders...we can help!