The Fun Factor

Yes it is true that investing in an integrated home automation system will increase your home’s worth. And yes, by programming set modes to automatically engage or disengage your lighting program and HVAC system, smart home technology can help the environment by conserving energy while saving you money on your monthly bills. And finally, yes it is also true that smart home technology can easily become an extreme convenience your family soon cannot live without. However, for many people these practical reasons for investing in an integrated home automation system are simply not enough. It might not be a practical reason, but having fun is still the number one reason for many people when deciding to make the leap into a fully integrated home automation system. A good motto to live by is, “people don’t want technology, they want benefits.”

Fun with music Have your entire music library at the touch of your fingers. Push a button and within 5 seconds the song you want to listen to will begin to play, in any room in the house. What, you want different songs playing in different rooms? No problem, you are in total control. You can even become your own DJ and program each song you will want to listen to throughout the course of the evening.

You can program your sound system to shut off when you go to bed or when you leave during the day, and you can likewise program it to turn on when you come home. You can even program a “vacation mode” into your system so that your home appears lived in while you are away.

How is this for fun? You can take your entire music library on the road with you. That’s right, you can have the ability to access your music on your laptop, bring it to your office, or have it available in your vacation home or camp. There is no need to lug around your CDs from location to location, and there is no reason to purchase the same CDs more than once. Once you have them inputted into your library, that library can be accessed from various locations with a couple button pushes.

Fun with video This term covers everything from a dedicated projector and screen system in an elaborate home theater, to plasmas in plain sight or hidden throughout the home, to LCD television monitors mounted beneath your kitchen cabinets or hidden behind your bathroom mirror.

The most innovative projects done today involve a “now you see it, now you don’t” approach. More often than not, people do not have the available space in their homes to dedicate an entire room to a home theater. However, they still want the ability to immerse themselves into a movie theater atmosphere. The solution is to actually hide the components that make up a home theater into the architecture of the home, that is, until the homeowner is ready to actually watch a movie. With a mere touch of a button, a projector can pop down from the ceiling, a screen can rise from a cabinet, the lights can dim down, and the motorized window treatments can activate. Who would know that your library or office is actually a home theater as well? Thanks to the world of motorization and to cutting-edge technological advances in products, plasmas can rise from floors, footboards of beds, or be revealed behind a framed piece of art that scrolls up or down upon activation. Your home can hide as many secrets as you wish.

Be Creative Ambiance Systems just won the 2005 Consumer Electronics Association’s (CEA) Mark of Excellence Award for the Most Innovative Project in the country. Customization is our specialty. Your smart home can be as creative as you want it to be. If you have any specific needs that you want your smart home to be responsible for, please feel free to present it to us. Chances are we will be able to accommodate you with the proper programming and equipment. Ambiance Systems has installed and programmed everything from an automatic fish feeding system for an 800 gallon, salt-water fish tank, to motorized cupola windows (complete with rain sensors - prompting the windows to automatically close as soon as it rains) to work with a passive cooling system in order to save on energy costs. We have programmed an automatic lawn warming system so that the homeowner’s dogs would have a place to play in the wintertime free from snow. Anything you need, let us know and we will try to accommodate you. And remember never discount the importance of using technology to enhance your everyday quality of life, fun is definitely a factor.