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Upgrading the Lighting, Shading and Automation Systems in a Westchester, NY Contemporary Home

There’s a life-giving energy in sunlight.

The 11 touch screens the team installed not only control the lighting and shading, but also the audio and video, the heating and air conditioning, and the security and surveillance systems. There’s a life-giving energy in sunlight. It’s something we all can feel, and something the designers of this contemporary home in Westchester, NY, wanted to capture. With walls of windows, they were able to bring the power of the sun, as well as the home’s beautifully landscaped grounds into its spacious interiors, providing an ideal setting for the owners’ extensive art collection.

“The opulence of this stunning home was dimmed by its old-school lighting control, its clutter of switches, thermostats, and video gear, and its lack of cohesive controls,” said Dave Raines, president of Harrison, NY-based Osbee Industries. “It was time for a complete transformation to make the home systems as exceptional as the art collection and designer spaces.”

In a house this large (8,000 square feet), it’s crucial that all of the home systems be as easy to use and as automated as possible. Yet the original lighting control was a mixture of traditional on/off switches and a dated centralized system that covered only part of the house. That was a major problem. For example, it takes 10 loads of lighting to showcase just the areas of the living room and each piece of artwork displayed there–with 178 total lighting loads in the house.

Osbee engineers redesigned the lighting system using Crestron infiNET EX wireless dimmers and a centralized Crestron control system. Today the homeowners can choose from a number of pre-programmed scenes to adjust the lights perfectly for a given room, for multiple rooms, and even for the house as a whole.

There are 19 indoor audio zones and five outside. The new system also integrates 30 Crestron motorized shades, controllable from the lighting keypads, as well as the touch screens. Raines said that the inconvenience of the old shading system was one of the biggest annoyances cited by the homeowners.

The home includes nine centralized HD video sources, two centralized audio sources, plus five Crestron docking stations for iPods in various rooms of the house. There are 19 indoor audio zones and five outside, enabling the family to play music in different areas of the property–or send any combination of audio sources to any combination of zones.

Crestron DM distributes HD video to the dedicated home theater, a projection-based golf simulator, a 65-inch mirror TV in the living room, and flat-panel televisions throughout the house.

The 11 touch screens the team installed not only control the lighting and shading, but also the audio and video, the heating and air conditioning, and the security and surveillance systems.

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