Digital Home for the Rest of Us

Habla TCP/IP?

Some of the biggest factors in a custom automation company's success are the number and quality of dealers they have. Not only do dealers install and customize the systems, but they also help market the products and consult with potential customers. As companies such as Control4, Exceptional Innovation, and Lagotek take advantage of low-cost networking technologies to drive their systems, installers have to keep pace by learning new and sometimes complex computing skills.

Whereas AMX has its own university curriculum, with three different certification tracks -- Installer, Designer, and Programmer -- requiring weeks and months of detailed instruction, Lagotek and Control4 conduct three or four day training courses, with primers on wireless technologies such as Z-Wave, ZigBee, and Wi-Fi and hands-on installation routines.

"There is a learning curve for dealers, but they are more than willing and we are making it as painless as possible," says Ilya Billig, vice president of business development at Lagotek. Part of the Lagotek installation requires a Cisco router, which can be a difficult configuration, so the company hired consultants to develop a software tool to help dealers through the process.

While networking over CAT5 has been a fixture in the computer industry for years, the home automation market has only recently adopted it, along with wireless mesh networks that enable audio and video streaming and two-way communication between devices. Because many of the new home-automation systems are designed to integrate a wide variety of third-party products -- lights, security, stereo systems -- they are described as "open" systems. Of course, installing any full-fledged home automation system can be difficult without some prior knowledge or instruction, and the more technologies you add into the mix, the trickier it gets.

"I think 'open' can be a problem," says John Dorsey, president of Diem Digital Interiors in Dallas. "I'm an IT guy and I don't want unlimited options, with vendors all over the place. You can't have the relationships you need, and if something doesn't work with something else, you start finger-pointing."

The shift to more open platform systems is sure to come with its own unique challenges and problems, but the more familiar dealers are with the underlying computing technologies, the more success they will have with this new breed of automation system.