California's Title 24 presents implications for those engaged in new and retrofit home construction. While there are many different ways to look at power conservation and consumption, Paul Nagel, Control4's VP of engineering, talks about how home automation systems create a "greener" home. Not only does a smart home give more options to manage power consumption, but a smart home will also offer new levels of convenience for the home owner.

Since home automation allows the home to be aware and communicate, a home owner can receive notices or reports of actions taken to conserve energy, long before the power company steps in. Whether it's lighting control, heating and cooling or cost-based management, a home automation system provides proactive management. California may take the lead here in the States, but "Green Fever" is a world-wide interest, with the Europeans becoming far more conscious due to higher prices for energy.

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Recently I [Robert Scoble] was in Salt Lake City, Utah, and met with John Yoon, vice president of marketing at Control4, a firm that builds home automation systems. These systems do things like dim the lights when you turn on your home theater. Or control your home's temperature.

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When these homeowners wanted to add smart home functionality to an existing home, they turned to an integrator. The integrator presented Control4 as both a feature rich and affordable solution. Now this family has a single-remote experience to manage all the different systems in their home, including integrated audio, video, lighting, heating and air conditioning and security controls.

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It's more common than ever to use purpose-built hardware and software solutions, (Xbox, firewalls and VPN appliances, Google Search appliance, etc.). John Yoon, VP of marketing, and Bill Harper, director of development at Control4, discuss the advantages to a home automation controller and accompanying lighting, climate, and media solutions. The PC is certainly an important component to the digital home. Including Media Center PCs, iPods, Apple TVs and future systems through standards-based integration allows the home owner to deploy the best solution today and still support future components and digital accessories in the home tomorrow.

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Adding a home automation system to an existing home used to require tearing out drywall, installing thousands of feet of wire and surviving the battle of the mess and endless dust. John Yoon, VP of marketing, and Wally Barnum, a technical lead at Control4, educate Brad Baldwin on the reasons ZigBee provides the right wireless standard for home automation. Aimed primarily at monitoring and control rather than data transfer, ZigBee filled an important role to interface wirelessly to lighting, climate, and other systems. Just like WiFi became a popular consumer brand to represent the IEEE 802.11 standard, ZigBee is the moniker for IEEE 802.15.4.

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Smart lighting makes that "old" light switch cool again. It also saves you money as you conserve power.

Ed Ryan and Scott Moulton at Control4 talk about how little, everyday tasks can become conveniences with Smart Lighting. With Control4 "scenes," you can wake up to lights that come up gradually, have shades open to let in the sun, and have favorite wake-up music grow in volume. Keep kid's from turning on lights in the middle of the day. High-tech switches easily integrate into your walls and support more commands. Plus the same remote you use to turn on your TV can also control your lights. Finally, you can even turn lights on or off with a Web browser from a remote location.

Have you ever jumped in bed and then realized that an outside light is on but the switch is all the way downstairs? Or have you ever wanted to wow your friends in your home theater by having the lights dim gradually over a 10-second period? Find out how.

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Convenience. That's the big benefit of having all your music and video entertainment at your fingertips. Control4's Ed Ryan and Jeff Thomas discuss the benefits of every-room entertainment with Brad Baldwin. Using something called "scenes," Control4 allows you to integrate audio and video with your lighting and more to create moods and sound in different rooms in your home. And with all your music available with a quick tap on your visual remote that shows album art, allows for playlists, and offers searching, finding the right song is more fun than ever.

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Platforms are validated as partners develop solutions. Control4 invited a number of their key partners to display and show their solutions at CES. The solutions enhance and extend the lighting, climate, audio/visual, and security benefits. From Somfy's solutions to manage window coverings and lighting, to iPort's solution that leverages the iPod for digital content, to Key Digital's HD video and audio offerings for night-club owners, there are a number of solutions to benefit those seeking to create the everyday easy home. Other partners include: Vision Art (custom framed art to cover HD TVs); Card-Access (wireless controls); Home Automation, Inc. (audio, lighting, theater), Eaton (wireless controls); Wellspring Wireless (metering products based on ZigBee); DSC (security), Johnson Controls (light commercial market); and Ember (ZigBee Provider).

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Control4 Co-Founder and CTO Eric Smith speaks with Dennis Wood about how Control4 is bringing home automation to the masses. Smith is a member of vSpring's v100 - a peer-nominated group of the top 100 venture entrepreneurs in the Rocky Mountain region.

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For a highly reliable and secure automated home, networking devices and systems is a core requirement. Eric Smith, a co-founder and CTO at Control4, talks with 3Com Founder Bob Metcalfe. Metcalfe has a well-established reputation as a gifted technologist, as "Mr. Ethernet" (here's why), as a venture capitalist, and as board member at Ember Corporation. These days, he's placing bets on a new networking technology know as ZigBee, a 2.4GHz wireless standard - IEEE802.15.4 - aimed primarily at monitoring and control, rather than data transfer. In addition to Ethernet, Control4 solutions leverages ZigBee to connect systems where wires just aren't practical. In addition to making predictions for the future of the Smart Home, Smith and Metcalfe joke about the challenge of changing a thermostat to adjust for daylight savings time, and the reliability of Windows and PCs compared to a stereo receiver.

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Ed Ryan and Fred Geiger from Control4 talk about their 4Sight service. 4Sight enables remote access to your home via the Web so it's easier to interact with the automated features of your home. They talked to us about how you can lock down your Wii to only work from 5-7pm and how you can set alerts if your garage door is still open past 10:00 am. And your Contol4 dealer can remotely interact with and customize your home features. Today there are over ten thousand IP-based automated homes, and Control4 is leading the way by enabling the common man to automate their home.

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