Case Study Three - Integrated Automation System

The homeowner wanted an integrated automation system to manage the functions within their new home and were particularly concerned that the technology would be easy to manage, elegant and unobtrusive. Security systems (burglar alarm, CCTV & video door intercom) were an important element of the brief, including the ability to remotely monitor the house when away.

For the audio-visual elements of the installation, the brief was to design an entertainment system that would seamlessly match the client’s lifestyle and enhance their living experience. Furthermore, the homeowner wanted to future-proof their home by installing additional cable infrastructure at the outset, ready for future expansion.

The home automation system installed uses Control4 as the single user interface for everything.

The system is built on the KNX wiring protocol for the critical building management elements of lighting and heating control and provides excellent resilience and reliability by utilising distributed processing. This means there is no “central processor” in the system that could fail and render the essential lighting & heating systems inoperative.

In addition, KNX protects the homeowner’s investment as it is an industry standard, not an individual manufacturer, so if any part of the installed equipment requires replacement and is no longer manufactured, there are many other compatible components which can be used to replace or upgrade the system.

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Room-by-room control of the underfloor heating system to maximise energy efficiency. The wall keypads have temperature sensing modules built-in, which meant there was no requirement for separate thermostatic controls to be provided with the underfloor heating system.

Wave 2

Seamless, high-speed, professional grade WiFi was installed using the latest Wave 2 access points enabling automatic handover of wireless clients to each point as they are moved around the house, preventing dead spots and ‘drop-outs’

OvrC

OvrC (oversee) – is a revolutionary support platform that keeps the network working optimally at all times and allows our engineers to remotely manage, configure and troubleshoot devices on the network, including the Control4 system interfaces.

“At the outset, we weren’t focused on “lighting control.” We didn’t know what it was or how it might benefit us. Now that we have it, however, we really appreciate the simplicity and convenience it delivers: the ability to change many lights to predetermined settings at the touch of a single button and we love being able to control everything from a smart phone”

“When we were away for a month, we were a little anxious to leave our brand-new home unattended, but being able to review the CCTV recordings from the other side of the Atlantic was fantastic and gave us a feeling of security” At home, the convenience of the remote door video and access control is amazing.

“David and the team at Design Innovation did a great job of listening to us and coming up with a phased project that future proofed the system while staying within our budget. We didn’t feel like we were being pressurised or oversold to. We were in discussions with other companies that were more local, on our doorstep, but we felt more comfortable with DI and the reality has been that when needed on-site, they were always available in totally reasonable timeframes.”

“During our pre-contract dialogue, Design Innovation were very responsive and unlike other companies, seemed like they wanted our business. This was very important to us and we were pleased to see that it continued throughout the project, being very willing and able to work with us to troubleshoot and problem solve. The installation team did an amazing job, clearly and simply explaining how things work and hang together, helping us to understand a whole topic that was completely new to us. They worked with us and managed things to deliver the result we were looking for.”