How have you seen the smart home market change over time?

The market is changing perhaps faster than any other technology field right now!  When we started in the smart homes business 16 years ago we spent 70+ percent of our time educating customers about what was possible in a smart home and for what price…. today everyone has seen a movie, a commercial or heard stories about automation in a home and what it can do!   The amazing part is today most of it can be done wirelessly, in a 1/4 of the time and at 1/10th the cost as compared with 16 years ago…

What do you see the market moving towards in the next 5 years?

More mobile integrated solutions, lower cost and more DYI solutions that abstract the need for programming and move the environment where AI learns how you live and you speak to your home…  It will be a standard feature for new homes to have that technology built in as a cloud service.

What is your favorite aspect of a modern smart home?

The flexibility to control lighting and audio at a fraction of the cost.  Homes have 40-80 zones of lighting and to control all of them with a touch of a button really adds to the quality of life, we also have homes with 24 zones of audio and in the past none could use a system of that size.  Today customers are routinely playing audio in their homes with a single button press on their phone

What do you think of the current ‘voice assistant’ popularity?

Voice is where it is at.   We are at the infancy stage now but in a year it will be baked into everything and revolutionize smart technology.

How have you seen customers adapt to newer technology?

There will always be resistance to new technology and you will always have your early adopters and late adopters.   I remember having one of the first bag phones – I am an early adopter for sure, but today my 86 year old dad would use a smart phone to “zoom” video conference his family and watch you tube videos on car repair when he can’t type… That is crazy for someone who is a late, late, late adopter!