Family Gets Big Home Automation Makeover

Sometimes doing your job simply means making sure your client just has all the basic creature comforts of home … especially if it’s a 15,000-square-foot home.

That’s what Los Angeles-based DSI Entertainment Systems was tasked with by this homeowner, whose family up-sized in a big way from its previous residence and wanted to ensure daily operations weren’t overwhelming.

DSI’s Josh Christian says the system design for this home “was driven by the homeowner’s concern that the mundane tasks of turning on lights, controlling climate, operating an entertainment system, etc. would be much more difficult in their new 15,000-square-foot home, compared to their previous 3,000-square-foot home.”

The installation includes a Crestron system with lighting, HVAC (climate), security, pool/spa, and audio/video. Four in-wall Crestron touchpanels in strategic locations and handheld Crestron remotes in rooms with TVs provide control. Programming allows the family to set automated features such as an entertainment scene that activates exterior path lights, exterior ambiance lights, common area interior lights, and sets the temperature throughout the house during a party. They can then select music from Pandora, Sirius XM, or their iPod to play throughout the house using in-wall or mobile control devices.

The tidy rack system illustrates DSI’s attention to detail and organization on this project, an Electronic House Home of the Year Awards entry, that features nearly 50,000 feet of Liberty cabling and speaker wiring.

DSI designed a dedicated home theater in the basement, where the children have on-demand access to any movie, TV show or video game. The theater features a 7.2 James Loudspeaker and Velodyne surround-sound system, Digital Projection M-Vision projector and 10-foot-wide Stewart Filmscreen display.

Large LED flat panels are in the great room and living room with in-ceiling surround sound systems that are connected to the centrally located A/V distribution system. During the summer, the family entertains guests outside by the pool and loggia with a SunBriteTV display plus sound that can be heard across the yard from the Sonance landscape speakers.

“The end result provided both an extremely convenient way for the family to control the system from their laptop or iPad,” says Christian. “No matter where they are inside the house, or outside the house, the family has complete control of the system.”

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