When MLB all-star Adrian Gonzalez, was traded from the San Diego Padres to the Boston Red Sox, Gonzalez and his family purchased a new home on the opposite coast, nearly 3,000 miles away.

He wanted to include in his new home some of the best features he came to enjoy in his current residence.  In 2010, Gonzalez’ San Diego home had been equipped with an Apple-based Savant home control system, relying on Savant apps on iPads and iPhones to command the system. The integrator included a five-screen home theater with four built-in iPads in a counter in the rear to surf the web or play games.

Fortunately, the Gonzalezes wanted the same Savant control system in their new home. So his integrator just had to duplicate some of its original efforts into the new home.  Only this time, the company would need to fly their crew to the other side of the US and ship everything needed for the job (including tools) ahead of them.

As it turns out, it wasn't until after construction on the home was completed, that the Red Sox traded Gonzalez back to the West Coast to the Los Angeles Dodgers, so he’ll be able to use the Savant system to keep tabs remotely on his Boston home … before he presumably puts the home on the market.

Two industry magazines featured Gonzalez' Boston home each of which included a slideshow of the results.  Here's a link to one such slideshow illustrating the finished product.  You might want to find out more about what he incorporated into his home.  Click here to read an article about how it all came together.

If you are a sports fan, having a tiling feature on your TV is truly the ultimate way to watch.  Tiling means you can send multiple video signals to a single TV.  Imagine picture in picture on steroids.  Now, Savant offers 4, 6, and 9 source versions with the release of their SmartView Tiling.  For most sports fans, I'm sure the 4 is plenty.

OK, so you’ve got your big projection or flat panel TV.  Think how cool it would be to see one big picture with 3 smaller pictures off to the side!

Yes, you might have seen that before, BUT…with the Savant app, you just touch the screen icons on your iPad.  Up pop the sources and you can choose which source goes where.  Then, if you want, you can just double tap any of them and it will fill the screen.  Or, slide a small icon to the large one and everything flips.  But the coolest part of all is tracking which video source you are listening to.  The current one playing has a little speaker icon on it. All you do is slide that across to another screen and the sound flips!  That is just so slick!  Check out a demo here on this quick video.

With SmartView Tiling, Savant is just pulling way out in front of the pack in making it simple and fun to put the best technology at your fingertips.

If you don't want to miss any of the action in America's stadiums,  fairways, courts or tracks, call us!  We can bring it all home to you!

If you're like me, you already have used your smart phone or iPad around your house to stream music, control your DirecTV DVR or remotely control some device you have at home.

Of course, in my business, we create lots of home automation and control systems from manufacturers such as Crestron, Savant and Control4.  Invariably, everyone wants their smart phone or iPad to be programmed as a control device for whichever one of these systems we install.  And honestly, those phones and pads will work VERY well for that purpose.  Now as soon as I say that, let me be quick to add that those will not operate as seamlessly for that purpose as the manufacturer's own branded mobile device.

Still, for ease of use, each of those manufacturers has created apps for those commonly owned media devices for the simple reason that the consumer is already familiar with it and generally keeps them handy.  Those apps work as well as the control system manufacturer can possibly program those phones and tablets to perform that way.  But know that there will always be some kinda glitch--some incompatibility--that the consumer will experience when using their phone or wi-fi pad to control their home automation system.

Here's a good example of what I'm talking about.  Back in the day, you either owned a PC or a Mac.  If you created a document or spreadsheet in one type of platform and emailed it to s0meone who owned the other type of platform, they couldn't even open the thing let alone read it.  One day, the industry smartened up and started creating programs so the two could talk to each other.  Now the two could interface and everyone was happy.  But anyone will tell you that the two don't work together perfectly and your sometimes encounter formatting problems in documents or linkage problems in spreadsheets.

That's the way it is marrying the popular smart technologies with automated systems.  They WILL work and will be quite enjoyable when they do.  But for best results, use the mobile device designed for the product.