By Steve Panosian
Each CEDIA Expo trade show brings innovations from both new and long-participating companies and in the world of automated home control, Crestron is a major player within the industry. I particularly enjoyed checking out Crestron’s evolving Home operating system, and it is fascinating to see their exciting innovations that never cease to amaze.
I sat down recently with Michael Short, Senior Director of Residential and Hospitality Marketing to learn about how Crestron Home’s new OS 4 operating system underscores the company’s commitment to better serve the client, the system integrator, and designers who look to maximize how living spaces are being utilized and the diversity of what those spaces require.
Steve: What’s the background story with the Crestron Home solution?
Michael: Crestron Home was launched four years ago to develop and expand our residential business. Prior to Crestron Home, our custom-programmed Crestron solutions were designed by our dealers who could essentially program an experience for virtually any room to control anything we wanted for the world’s biggest luxury homes, hotels, and yachts. The power of the hardware and software took intensive know-how and considerable programming time to implement, and no two installations by different installers necessarily operated with the same UI look and feel. Once installed, changes to the UI were something that required programming changes and that of course meant in most cases “rolling the truck”.
Crestron Home had to be easy to program, (so easy in fact that we don’t call it programming, it’s simply configuration), for the installer and user-friendly to operate for the homeowner. This design objective was a requirement to specifically address the fast-moving consumer market, and its related dynamics, and also achieve the scalability required for higher-end residential smart home applications.
Crestron knew we had to compete to expand our consumer business, and the business model was built on achieving faster system implementation and reaching a level of proficiency in a much shorter period of time. It was equally important for Crestron Home’s operating power to run 100s of devices designed for any home, inside and outside, and extend the same user experience, for example, to yachts.
Steve: You mentioned user-friendly operation, what changes were made for the consumer?
Michael: Our design vision was focused on a standardized user experience for every customer in terms of its look and feel, so all the dealer was required to do was customize that experience for their clients. Similar to your mobile phone, think of how you would customize which apps you see, their size, where they are located and grouped, and how you talk to the device. Crestron Home OS allows the dealers to work within a framework of experiences that are pretty endless, and simply decide on what elements to bring into the interface.
The advantage of having our own operating system gave us the ability to continuously improve the smart home user experience over time. And we are talking about the end-user enjoying ongoing and more frequent experience improvements. For us this has been almost every 6 weeks pushing out OS updates to clients, for free.
This is a clear paradigm shift compared to the past when the initial installation was pretty much set and didn’t change for a year or more. Any changes or updates, from the simplest to the more complex, required programming enhancements and that was a cost that the consumer would need to pay for.
It became evident over the last few years that smart homes aren’t just for the super high-end customers. Designers, builders, and architects knew it was complex and required specialists to program a system for these homes, and they were extremely difficult to do. With the proliferation of DIY solutions like Google Home and Alexa Home Assistant delivering experiences by controlling the Internet of Things (IoT) devices through a phone, now everyone can have a smart home.
What OS 4 brings to the party is defining the middle ground with a Crestron solution and an opportunity for designers, architects, and builders to become more comfortable with what’s possible through conversations with their clients about smart home design. We dramatically improved the UI and aligned the power of Crestron Home with the expanded ability to control tunable lighting, which is a rapidly growing business opportunity that plays directly into the hands of designers and architects.
Steve: It sounds like OS 4 is a reinvented Crestron Home UI, what changed?
Michael: The UI received a complete makeover; its refinements make it more intuitive, and its flexibility makes an even more personalized look and feel possible. This refinement extends to how each room in the home is planned out and all the possibilities that make for a great dialog between the client, designer, and the CI technology designer. The UI graphics, icons, layouts, and text can be made larger and more readable. We made everything more accessible from home screens and deeper menu levels once a specific room is selected. Imagine that the touch screen can provide a perfect view of the entire home and every aspect that the homeowner has control over.
When you consider homes with many different rooms, it can be difficult to develop a user interface view for customers that allows access to their entire system, making sure to do so with fewer taps when considering the house layout of the UI and the filters needed in the experience. In Crestron Home, there is a standard view and a compact view that game changes this viewing and control experience. For the design-build community, it doesn’t matter how many rooms are in the house, we can create really great ways to view and manage every room in that property through the apps and touch screens that provide very intuitive and easy access. We also changed the way that you can look at images in the room so the design-build team can influence the way that the application looks on touch screens, so each room has a beautiful image that stretches across the device’s display. This is important that the designer can influence and deliver to their clients how the touch screens become an extension of the home’s design and also give them a greater level of control.
Because the UI is more intuitive, there are many features that are easy to implement and actually fun to use.
One such new feature implementation is Smart Scheduling. This allows customers to schedule their home systems so they can easily edit events in the home to create, for example an away mode or a holiday mode. They now have the ability to switch interior lights off easily, bring shades down, and switch exterior lights on – all set by the consumers themselves.
We also introduced “Home Paging”. This is an intercom feature that is built into the touch screen that facilitates voice calls to touch screens throughout the home. Now, you can page and talk to any one room in the house, or alert everyone that it’s dinner time by simply pinging any of the touch screens you need to address.
For better-enjoying entertainment options, Xfinity® voice control has also been added to the suite of VUI products available in Crestron Home. Control via the Apple® Siri® voice recognition software has been dramatically improved, too, and the addition of Apple Shortcuts into Crestron Home opens up a world of possibilities when using Apple devices.
The list of features and enhancements goes on and on.
Steve: You mentioned lighting is a huge opportunity with OS 4.
Michael: A major feature OS 4 supports is something that we call our Digital Lighting Platform. Lighting is a huge area of growth, and it is gaining the attention of designers and the more decerning homeowners. With the Digital Lighting Platform, you can now unify all your digital lighting protocols on one single platform. It is not unusual for a home to have different types of lighting. There are always going to be multiple types of lighting – in-ceiling, wall fixtures, lamps, and many other variations. A lighting designer or a builder will usually define what lighting solution is recommended from traditional dimming all the way through to fully tunable digital lighting.
There are many different digital lighting protocols out there that designers and builders utilize, from our own DMX-C, DALI, DMX, or even Philips Hue is classified as its own protocol. Let’s say you want full-color tuning specifically on your artwork in your home so that it can be accented the way you want to see it and you have Crestron Fixtures in your ceilings running on our own DMX-C protocol so that the main living spaces can run Circadian lighting, but then you also have wall sconces that are using DALI 2 for architectural lighting. The problem is if your system can’t talk to the different digital lighting protocols, it is extremely difficult to not only set up the home’s lighting design expectations but to make changes and configure it.
Crestron Home has addressed this challenge because it can talk to any digital lighting protocol and deliver a seamless Crestron Home experience. So now the design-build community can specify any protocol, bring it into Crestron Home, and deliver a spectacular lighting experience with both control and configuration of simplified digital lighting, traditional or digital, all on one platform. This is revolutionary for everyone involved with the design of lighting technology.
Another example of a tunable lighting scenario made easy is the concept of supporting wellness in the home through lighting. Crestron Home has a built-in feature to support a one-button press circadian lighting setting, this sets all the lights in the home (or in specific rooms) to go to circadian mode, where the lights will follow the time of day and mimic the natural light outside. This “one button” feature mitigates the need for extensive lighting programming to activate and set this in the home, and of course, because it’s built-in at any time it can switched off or changed to a different scene and vice versa.
To summarize, our digital lighting platform is a game changer because this part of the update almost functions as a “platform within a platform” — it’s that advanced. It allows access to both the front- and back-end experience of a lighting system, regardless of the digital protocol used in the fixture type, giving you the power to blend a broad range of luminaires. This update supports mix-and-match tunable white or color lighting using DMX-C, DALI® 2 lighting, Philips® Hue® smart lighting, and many more — regardless of the protocol.
Steve: How do Crestron’s shading solutions fit into the picture?
Michael: Crestron’s shading solutions are constantly being updated because they are a critical part of any whole-home lighting and climate solution. Crestron is offering what amounts to an aesthetic overhaul of its QMT 3 Series Décor shading with a redesign of the hardware system. They’re available in six color options and are elegant additions to our shading hardware line. We also offer lithium-ion rechargeable battery power shades where a retrofit demands cable-free installation, and our wireless shades provide many benefits. They are perfect for hard-to-reach windows, replacing manual corded products to enhance child and pet safety, or simply providing a solution for customers seeking motorized shading without wires.
Each room can be outfitted with Crestron’s custom-designed Horizon® Keypads that do more than just lighting and window shade control. The keypads can be programmed to set room temperature and check the status of your door locks or alarms with a quick glance. You can select a mood for your favorite entertainment sources, too.
Steve: What is Crestron Home supporting with audio?
Michael: Crestron is also putting the finishing touches on several new audio products — additions to our successful DM NAX™ Audio-over-IP technology line that will be available early next year. The DM-NAX-4ZSA-50 is perfect for adding a few extra zones to a large DM NAX deployment — or bringing multi-room audio to MDU spaces or smaller homes. Offering native Crestron Home platform integration, this latest addition to the DM NAX line of amplifiers will fit nicely in structured wire enclosures and allow developers and dealers to offer a compelling smart home system with AV integration by coupling this with a Crestron Home processor.
We will also introduce, soon, an Audio Return Processor that is designed to bridge streaming TVs to a multi-room audio distribution system.
Adding to our audio enhancements is a Bluetooth wall plate accessory that can be surface mounted and hidden away — just a single network connection allows you to control and manage the device through the Crestron Home OS. Other features include an onboard DSP for tone shaping and signal optimization, all delivered via a single network cable that also powers the plate.
Steve: I wrote in the past about Crestron’s Marine products. Does Crestron Home OS 4 bring the same experience to Yachting?
Michael: Yes, it does, and the Marine experience is simply an extension of the smart home. We have designed integrated lighting, shades, audio, video, climate, security, and more, which have created a contemporary solution for the modern superyacht. The Horizon keypads and dimmers put control of all of it at your fingertips. Of course, the mobile app can run everything imaginable to enhance your home experience while on the water.
It’s no wonder that Crestron Home OS 4 won a Technology Designer Magazine Performance Home award, a Residential Systems Best of Show Award, and the TWICE Best of Show Award for all of its innovations.
