Smarthouse Blog

Note: This article was originally published at Herald Tribune.

State-of-the-art system features intuitive, accessible controls

One in an occasional series about the region’s growing technology sector.

Smart homes have graduated from a collection of complicated remote controls for each device, cluttering tables and frustrating residents. Today, homes are far more intelligent.

Voice control, preset programs and a central command gadget such as an iPad raise the bar on homes equipped with automated shades, lighting, temperature, security, video and indoor/outdoor audio. Speaker volume can be increased with the wave of a hand.

This is the high-end stuff of dreams.

Mark van den Broek, the founder and chief executive of SmartHouse Integration, located in Sarasota’s Rosemary District, installs the ELAN Entertainment and Control System for his clients here and elsewhere in the country.

SmartHouse is off to a bang-up year on revenue. “This quarter we’ve already done more than we did last year and last year was a record year,” van den Broek said, declining to cite specific gross-income figures. “I don’t want my competition to know exactly what we’re going. But it’s delicious.”

Van den Broek and his seven employees do not lack for work. “We don’t sell anymore. We don’t market anymore. Clients come to us,” van den Broek said. “All of the manufacturers’ websites have our projects on them as examples of what it’s supposed to be.”

So how many clients do you have? “I don’t know. Seriously.”

Award-winning technology

His home-automation and systems-integration company has won more than a dozen national awards from the Consumer Technology Association. The association’s TechHome Division has given 11 Mark of Excellence awards to van den Broek’s company. He recently added to that collection with the 2018 Mark of Excellence Award for Home of the Year up to $50,000 for a custom ELAN installation in a local island home.

The trophies that adorn his office solidified his reputation for high-quality technology and installation.

Robert Archer, the publisher of ElectronicHouse.com, an information center on integrated home technology, said the TechHome honors “mean more than any other industry association award, and they represent the best the technology and installation professional industry has to offer.”

Nick Melone, a Sarasota homebuilder, real estate investor and restaurant owner, works on high-end commercial and residential projects. “We were just really looking for a good operating, smart home system,” he said. He found one in ELAN, which has been in the home-technology business since 1989 and is based in Petaluma, California.

“I’ve been through multiple renovations where I’ve ripped out” other systems, he said. ELAN “is everything you want; it’s everything the other systems are not. … It works.

“It’s simple, easy, not complicated. Other systems I’ve found you go into it and all of a sudden you’re in five or six windows, and you forget how to get back.”

Three years ago, when he built a house for his family on Siesta Key in the Sanderling Club, Melone had SmartHouse install an ELAN system at a cost of $70,000 to $75,000. “Our whole family loves the system. … I’m very happy with it.”

Melone now has SmartHome install ELAN in his residential projects.

Lights, cameras, automatic action

SmartHouse Integration custom designs a system that fulfills a client’s desires using ELAN’s intuitive and accessible controls. Motorized window shades rise and fall with the sun. Interior lights automatically power up to preset levels as the sun sets. Blue lights illuminate the pool. The ELAN mobile app, remote or wall-mounted touchscreens allow temperature changes in any of the home’s climate zones. Speakers spread throughout the interior and exterior in one of a home’s audio zones deliver surround sound without distortion at high levels. Irrigation control and electronic door locks are other options.

Numerous cameras record video from a host of vantage points, and the scenes can be viewed on mobile devices, computers and televisions in the home or anywhere in the world. When someone rings the doorbell, all the touchscreens in the house light up and play video of the front porch.

For waterfront homes, infrared sensors on seawalls trigger outdoor lights and send alerts to the owner’s mobile devices when a boat or individual approaches from the water. Voice control is also available.

During a tour of a SmartHouse project, a 17,000-square-foot mansion on Sarasota Bay, van den Broek described what his team had accomplished there. The ELAN Entertainment and Control System serves as the home’s central network hub. The hardware includes eight 7-inch in-wall touch panels, four smaller touch panels and three HR2 remotes.The HR2 devices, like the panels, control everything in the network and features 46 hard buttons to operate the media system alone.

This project alone won three 2016 Mark of Excellence Awards.

Van den Broek integrated Lutron Homeworks Lighting and Shades with the ELAN Entertainment and Control System so lighting could operate automatically or be set by the homeowners from anywhere in the world. Numerous security cameras alert residents to visitors with video, and homeowners can talk to arrivals from their kitchen or hotel rooms. The smart lighting highlights the art aficionado’s extensive collection and changes at specific times to best enhance the art it emphasizes.

SmartHouse also installed 15 LED fountain lights in the pool’s overflow that shine up on the overflow wall. The lights are programmed and synchronized to the outdoor music system to create an amazing light show, Van den Broek said. The homeowner has 25 buttons he can press, and each launches a unique show, from AC/DC to Alicia Keys.

The company has worked on three projects for this client for a total cost of $350,000. “He just keeps coming back for more,” van den Broek said.

Van den Broek’s most expensive job to date exceeded $500,000. “I’m still surprised at how much money people will actually pay,” he said.

The move to Sarasota

His 20 years of experience in the field began in Shaker Heights, Ohio. He sold that company to his employees and opened in Sarasota in 2005 after a client here sought his work. It was February. While sitting on a dock at a rental place on Siesta Key, the warmth convinced him to move. Plus, he was able to sign up some big clients.

“In the late ’90s and early 2000s, we really started to take off and helped the industry a little bit in terms of future proof of wiring and setting up infrastructures in homes that people would take advantage of,” van den Broek said. Today’s cable networks are stout enough to handle the coming increase in broadband speeds, from the current 4G to the launch of 5G — which is expected to be at least 10 times faster than 4G.

“And that was one of the things we really sold to our early adapters was, ‘Hey, your house will be future proofed,’” he said, and can handle emerging technologies that use higher data speeds.

“Homes that were wired back then with Category 5 cable (which handles networking, Wi-Fi, high-definition video and cameras) are still legitimate today. We can still run the newest, latest technology in homes that we wired 20 years ago.”

Van den Broek is a major proponent of cabled homes since wire can pass much more data much faster than wireless systems, though the latter dominate the current buzz in the smart-home industry. Structured, wired connections afford greater stability, add flexibility for future technology and increase a home’s resale value, he said.

Complicated and outdated home-automation systems frustrated homeowners, van den Broek said. The ELAN system does everything, a very usable, reliable, simple network, he said.

“I’m jacked every day to create something really cool for my clients,” van den Broek said.

Note: This article was originally published at Connected Design.

A Longboat Key, Florida couple was recently tasked with finding someone to integrate a system into their home that would allow for total control of their technology by voice command. The music-loving duo elicited Mark Van den Broek for the job who then selected ELAN home automation and Amazon Alexa to make the 8,000-square-foot home become all that they envisioned.

“Mark and his team were the only ones who asked us what we wanted the house to do, instead of just listing what they could do, and then they made it happen,” the homeowner said. “It was like magic!”

Step one in the entire process was to integrate an ELAN controller into the home to act as the “brains” of the operation. Next, Van den Broek and his team installed nine Amazon Echo Dots throughout the home with customized Alexa voice controls to allow the couple to speak to Alexa in a more conversational tone. For instance, the homeowners can say “Alexa, good morning” to turn on the lights, open window shades, turn on the living room TV, and disarm the security system. Conversely, they can say “Alexa, goodnight” to shut off the audio and video on the first floor, turn on the master bathroom lights, turn off the indoor pool fountains and waterfalls, adjust the thermostats to a preset temperature, and dim the foyer chandelier to 10 percent until 2 AM when the lights completely turn off for the night.

With their love of music and appreciation of high-quality audio in mind, SmartHouse Integration also created a 16-zone audio system featuring ELAN amplification and distribution, an Autonomics media server, and SpeakerCraft AIM Series 2 in-ceiling speakers to allow the couple to listen to music from anywhere in their home. Accessing their music selection is as easy as opening the ELAN app or using one of the many ELAN in-wall touch panels.

“We knew that top-quality audio was a make-or-break feature of this system,” Van den Broek said, “so we used the best ELAN and SpeakerCraft equipment to ensure every room sounds fantastic, access is fast and easy, and they can use content from multiple sources simultaneously.”

Like the rest of the home, the theater was designed with the best in audio from three SpeakerCraft AIM Cinema in-wall speakers, a SpeakerCraft Profile AIM center channel speaker, and two Sunfire 10-inch subwoofers.

And with the ELAN remote the couple can change more than just the channel.

A single touch of the remote’s TV button creates a complete ready-to-watch atmosphere. The Sony projector is turned on and displayed onto the Dragonfly projection screen, the surround sound is activated, and the lights are dimmed to an appropriate movie-watching level. From there the couple can access their media services including streaming and downloaded content through Apple TV, Roku, or a cable box. And if you thought the level of detail couldn’t get any more precise, when a program is paused or stopped, the wall scones automatically brighten to 50 percent until play resumes.

“This beautiful island home became a true paradise for my clients,” van den Broek added. “By making nearly every electronic function of the home easier to use, accessible from anywhere, and connected for monitoring, the ELAN system with Alexa voice control has entirely changed their home life. We hope this inspires others to investigate how smart home control can make their houses easier to manage and more comfortable to live in.”

Note: This article was originally published at essentialinstall.com.

ELAN Control and 2GIG Security Bring 24-Hour Automation to New Waterworks Private Social Club

Sarasota, Florida social club can now almost run itself thanks to advanced automation designed and installed by local award-winning electronic firm SmartHouse Integration.

The owners of Waterworks, a new private social club have taken great care to create a trendy, comfortable, and safe environment where local leaders and business owners can network, relax, and host private events.

In order to deliver all of these benefits while consolidating and simplifying management of the building’s security, lights, TVs, audio, climate, and access control, the owners hired leading South Florida electronics integration firm, SmartHouse Integration, to install the ELAN Control System and 2GIG security system to provide remote control of every sub-system.

According to SmartHouse Integration owner Mark van den Broek, Waterworks has made full use of the ELAN Control System’s capabilities, integrating almost every electronic function in the building and automating schedules to make daily operations as simple and worry-free as possible.

“Waterworks is a shining example of the extraordinary power of ELAN’s automation technology,” Mark says. “From opening to closing, the control system manages every building system, with automatic scheduled events such as the lights turning on at 6:00 AM for the cleaning crew, and the 2GIG security system arming at midnight if the occupancy sensors detect no one is in the building. With this level of integration and ELAN’s simple, powerful control interface, staff can focus on providing the best service to members instead of running around to manually adjust lights, speaker volumes, or TVs.”

Control goals

Since Waterworks’ goal is to foster relationships and communication between members, the technology is used to create a specific environment rather than to offer activities or distractions. That’s why the TVs at the bar play silent black and white movies, and why there is no cell phone use allowed inside after 7:00 pm. The eight-zone audio distribution system plays a central role in the club’s classy ambiance as well, playing background music at low volumes so it doesn’t become the focus of members’ attention.

“It’s more about atmosphere than entertainment,” Mark continues, “and each building system is part of that atmosphere. It’s why we programmed the thermostats and motorised window shades to react to ambient temperature and sunlight, and why we’re integrating ELAN’s new face recognition for door access. These are features that require no staff involvement once they’re set up, and present an ultra-cool, modern environment that matches the club’s high-end aesthetics and services.”

The club’s chandeliers and plug-in lamps are also integrated for simple control, automatically brightening and dimming depending on ambient light levels throughout the day. The ELAN system turns the TVs and audio zones on at 10:30 AM, requiring no input from staff.

As a sister brand to ELAN under the Nortek Security & Control umbrella, the 2GIG security system integrates perfectly. Staff can easily arm and disarm the security system through the ELAN interface, while the 2GIG panel is installed safely out of reach from the guests along with the rest of the system equipment. For ultimate peace of mind, multiple ELAN surveillance cameras provide live and recorded coverage of the property that can be viewed through the ELAN app from anywhere in the world.

Waterworks features a pool room, a cigar room, an outdoor deck, and a bar, and each member can reserve the entire establishment for one day a year to host a private event. SmartHouse Integration also added Chromecast and Apple TV units that allow members to stream presentations or their own personal music during these private functions.

With a nod toward aesthetics, SmartHouse Integration used SpeakerCraft in-ceiling speakers to provide multiple zones of audio. The 40 individually-controllable zones of lighting operate through a Lutron system, which integrates with ELAN for full control through the ELAN interface.

“If a hospitality provider such as a bar, restaurant, hotel or social club, wants to provide the ultimate modern-chic experience for guests,” Mark explains, “ELAN technology can help them do so by eliminating countless minor tasks and presenting a clean aesthetic that uses technology in the background, rather than making it a visible focal point. And since the ELAN system is expandable, constantly updated to integrate with new third-party products, and introduces new features such as voice control and facial recognition, it’s value only grows over time.”