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Taking Your AV Expertise Outside

Gordon van Zuiden says that engineering and installing the best outdoor wired and wireless networking systems, networked cameras, gate control systems, outdoor theaters, lighting control, speakers, and weather stations should all be part of your total home control offerings.

Understanding how to best engineer and install outdoor wired and wireless networking systems, networked cameras, gate control systems, outdoor theaters, lighting control, speakers, and weather stations are all part of our total home control offerings. All of these systems can be app controlled inside the home or remotely from any internet-connected mobile device.

Three of the more valuable solutions that we have added to our portfolio of intelligent outdoor technologies are in the area of lighting control, outside home theaters, and gate control solutions. I’ll review each of these solutions in more detail.

Lighting Control

For years we have implemented Lutron’s lighting control system for interior and exterior lighting requirements, but now we have added Luxor’s FX Luminaire ZDC low-voltage lighting products, which interface with our Lutron lighting control systems and give us the ability to address each individual outdoor low-voltage light fixture to change its color, saturation, and brightness. As a result, outdoor landscape lighting becomes a form of entertainment in its own right. We can choose timed color scenes for evening landscape lighting that are customized for Christmas events, birthday parties, or even sporting events.

In our home we have used the Luxor lighting control system to provide down lighting out of an oak tree in the middle of the backyard deck that provides seating for our outdoor home theater.

Much as a lighting designer specifies lighting control fixtures, lighting color, and scenes for lighting control inside the home, we now can enjoy this level of customized lighting design for an outdoor environment. Any backyard area can be effectively and attractively lit using the broad range of Luxor’s ZDC-capable low-voltage lighting fixtures.

In our home we have used the Luxor lighting control system to provide down lighting out of an oak tree in the middle of the backyard deck that provides seating for our outdoor home theater. Adjoining the deck, we built a bocce court where we use the Luxor ZDC lights to light the court. We turn on the party lighting theme and the colors of the bocce court change every 20 seconds–a beautiful and functional way to accent the court.

Home Theater

For our backyard home theater we used a 15-by-12-foot painter’s canvas drop cloth that we hoist like a sail up two 20-foot poles cemented next to our deck to create a 260-inch diagonal outdoor theater screen (see photo). The oak tree in the middle of the deck provides the canopy infrastructure for lighting and the theater’s speakers. Next to the deck we built an outdoor AV cabinet that supports a receiver driven by a Sonos player for music, Apple TV for movies, and a TiVo Mini for live TV and sports (see photo). Our small, lightweight Optoma projector can easily be stored in our outdoor AV cabinet when not in use. We integrate all of this equipment with a Control4 remote that turns on the Luxor downlights, the receiver, projector, and selects the appropriate entertainment source with one button.

Driveway Gate Control

We have found that almost all of our clients have an antiquated analog gate control system that rings their home phone system for communication and access control. The problem is that most of our clients are removing these landline systems and only using their cellphones. They want to be able to see who is at their front gate from their phone, talk to them, and open the gate all from their mobile phone, whether they are at home or away. To solve this problem, we incorporate the Mobotix T25 door camera station into the electronics of a motorized gate control platform. The Mobotix T25 gives our clients the ability to see who is at the gate from anywhere. They can also initiate a command within the Mobitix mobile app to open and close their gate and to initiate a two-way conversation with the guest.

Our clients look to cyberManor to be their one-stop shop for all of their home technology needs. If we don’t understand how technology best enhances their outdoor living requirements as well as their indoor needs, we haven’t provided the breadth of consulting advice that they need. Just as the best indoor technology designs are accomplished with a well-thought-out interior low-voltage wiring plan, an outdoor technology infrastructure is best accomplished with a careful exterior wiring plan. Devise technology solutions for your client’s entire property, and you not only maximize your chances of winning their project but you can significantly enhance the project’s revenue and profit potential. That’s a win for everyone.

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