We had a great time this year at Cedia 2017 held in beautiful San Diego California.  Our staff members attended multiple classes and researched new and exciting products.  

We attended the Control4 Keynote speech and learned about some pretty exciting news.  For Control4 customers with on-wall/in-wall touchscreens, table top touchpanels, and doorstations, a new Beta intercom app has been released.   Previously you could only use the intercom panel to panel, or panel to all panels.  The new Beta app gives you the ability to call from the app remotely to a touchpanel in your home.  Perfect as another way to contact your family or guests if you are not able to reach them on their cell phone.  For those with doorstations you can now answer the door station via your iOS or android phone.  While on an intercom call users can activate other smart home features such as turning on a light, unlocking or locking a door without leaving the app.  
**must have 4Sight for these features to work**


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Spotify, iHeartradio, and SiriusXM now joins Deezer®, Napster®, Pandora®, TIDAL®, and TuneIn® on the EA controllers, with the release of OS 2.10  you now have all these great streaming services built into your EA controller! Please contact us if you are a current control4 client and we'll get you set up. 

Clients who are utilizing the automation portion of Control4's platform finally have the ability to personalize their automation themselves, with control4's new When>>Then personalization.  This new feature gives the user direct control of automation events in their home.   Now you can adjust what happens when you press a keypad button, when motion is detected, or a door opens or shuts. ​

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“Combined with the skills and stability of a professional installation by trained and certified Control4 Dealers, we’re enabling a perfect blend of professional expertise with a homeowner’s ability to establish and change their automation preferences,” said Martin Plaehn, Control4 CEO. “As homeowners live with and adjust their personalized Control4 home to match the way they live, we believe they will expand their smart home with additional devices and integrated systems, which is great repeat business for our network of expert Control4 Dealers.”​


 

Triad Speakers has announced the release of Triad One Streaming Amplifier, a high fidelity wireless multi-room audio solution.  The amplifier boasts 100 watts per channel, two IR outputs for local source control, and a subwoofer output.  The Triad One is a great way to add streaming audio to any room, easily, and integrates into your existing Control4 platform. ​

In Addition to the Triad One, Triad has also released an 8 zone amplifier, a 8x8 audio matrix and a 24x24 audio matrix.  

The 8 zone amplifier is powerful and compact (1URU) powering eight zones at 100watts of crystal-clear amplification with an extraordinary -109 dB signal-to-noise ratio and 0.003% total harmonic distortion for fantastic sound in every room.  

The new audio matrixes were designed to easily distribute high resolution audio to every room.  Available in 8x8 or 24x24, you can even stack two for a whopping 48 zones of audio.  These matrixes are equipped with analog, optical and digital coax inputs, reducing the need to purchase additional DAC's for your digital only audio devices.  These matrices deliver an astounding, -105 dB signal-to-noise ratio and maintain sound quality from EA controllers and other sources.  In addition to that they also feature independent gain, bass, treble, five-band parametric equalizer, balance, loudness, and mono-summing controls for precise audio customization for each audio zone.

Triad knows audio!

If that wasn't enough amazing news......Pakedge has released a new Wifi router with Bakpak lite.  This small, yet high perfomance router was designed for today's smaller connected homes.  The WR-1 delivers 500Mbps WAN to LAN throughput, dual band 802.11ac wireless,  2x2 MIMO antenna array for 1300MBps data transfer and advanced 802.11ac Wave 2 MU-MIMO with beamforming technology.  Wave 2 MU-MIMO is the latest, most advanced wireless standard designed to increase wireless performance. MU-MIMO (multi-user, multiple input, multiple output) beamforming technology allows the WR-1 to transmit data to multiple devices simultaneously instead of only one (standard WiFi).  The WR-1 supports the additional of two WAPS for wholehouse wireless coverage. 

With Bakpak lite, the WR-1 enables us to remotely check on your network, potentially saving your money from a truck roll.   Please call or email us to find out more about Pakedge Networking products.  

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Is your mind blow yet?
​.....there's more

One of our personal favorites at the show, the Samsung Frame. Finally a television set that everyone can appreciate, including your interior designer. 

Beautiful on, beautifull off, this set is truly dual purpose and pleasing in any environment.  Choose artwork from Samsung's library or upload your family photos.  

Atlona released OmniStream, a new AV over IP solution that enabled 4K HDR @ 60Hz over Cat5e/Cat6 cabling.  ​It delivers the uncompromised performance you expect from traditional AV distribution, the flexible scalability and cost efficiency of integrating over a standard Gigabit network, and full support for 4K HDR formats – today and into the future.


​Coming November 2017

That about wraps it up for CEDIA! We thoroughly enjoy meeting with manufacturers and learning new skills from other CEDIA professionals.  We are looking forward to providing you, our customers, with these new and innovative products.  

  We are very pleased to announce our partnership with Control4.  We can now offer a platform that incorporates not only Audio and video, but HVAC, Security and Lighting.  Control4 is the ideal companion to all of your smart home devices, all in an easy to use package.

The control4 system features an on screen navigator that is easy to read and navigate, plus you can use your phone or ipad to control it as well. 

Have you ever wanted to be able to come home, walk through your  front door and press one button and watch your family room lights gradually come to 65% power, your garage door senses you are no longer in the garage and the door closes, your bar lights turn on to 50%, and your favorite pandora station comes alive on your family room and whole house audio system.  With Control4 this is all possible.  Call us today to experience Control4.

As the popularity of streaming services continues to rise  many of our clients realize that their internet connection with their devices are less than optimal.  In this post I'll go over a few tips on how make sure you don't enter the buffer zone.

The #1 best way to make sure you devices stream is to hard wire everything - if you have network cables ran to your tv or equipment location, utilize them. You'll never have to worry about the wifi connection dropping out.

The next best way to make sure your wireless devices are able to stream is to locate your router centrally to the devices if possible.  If your router is at one end of the house and your smart tv is at the other end connected via wireless, you will likely run into issues.  If you can move the router closer to the TV, the better.  Most new homes have structured wiring, or cat5 cabling throughout, it's a matter of making the right connections to get everything configured properly.  If your home is older, a new line can be ran to locate the router more centrally.

Can't move your router? The next best option is to install a hardwired access point or an AP.  This is a small device on your wired network that wireless devices can connect to.  A cat5/6 cable will need to be ran to install an access point.  If one access point doesn't give you enough coverage you can add another one, using a different SSID and channel, but if you need more you are better off investing in a wireless controller.

A wireless repeater/extenders are another option in some homes.   It contains two 'routers', one that picks up your homes existing wireless network (bubble) and then another that will rebroadcast that signal to extend the network.  Some drawbacks of the extenders and repeaters is that they have to have  a pretty good signal from your original router, and depending on their strength may not extend the signal enough to reach to the furthest devices.   This part of the setup will be a little bit of trial and error since you need to find a location with power as well.   Some repeaters and extenders can drastically cut down your network speed solely because how they operate, often times cutting your speed in half.  Use extenders & repeaters only if there is no way to run wire to a location for an access point or hardwired connection.

Wifi distributed systems are needed in large homes that need more than a router/ap/ap.  Wifi distributed systems allow for multiple access points to be installed on one network and have roam assist.   When using any repeater or ap you will find you device doesn't want to let go of one signal and latch onto the newer stronger signal (because you moved to the other end of the hosue), roam assist tracks devices on the network and will tell the ap to kick off the device and connect to the closer, better signal that in range.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea on the options you have available for your media streaming needs.

Have  a favorite track on your networked harddrive, then a few on spotify but want to listen to them in one great playlist?  Make a sonos favorites playlist!

You can make almost anything a sonos favorite: an album, a station, a song....anything!

this is how to add anything to your sonos favorites: pull up any track, album, artist or station, then press the menu button, then press 'more', then 'add to favorites'

add the song to your favorites, or build a sonos playlist. 

To listen to your favorites, go to the sonos menu on the left, choose 'sonos favorites'
look for the playlist  you created when you saved your music.  tap on the playlist you'd like to listen to.

now you have quick access to all your favorites, whether they are songs, albums, pandora stations, spotify stations, even podcasts!

Ring has introduced a new and improved Ring wifi video doorbell, called the pro.  With the pro you get an upgraded resolution of 1080p vs the 720p of the standard ring. Plus customizable motion detection zones,  live stream activation, a slimmer body at 1.85" wide, four interchangeable face plates and supports 5Ghz wifi.  *Hardwired connections only*

Ring is  a great way to add another layer of security to your home by enabling you to view and talk to visitors even if you are not home.  Ring works on all IOS, android and windows 10 devices. Contact us today to find out where we can install your new Ring wifi video doorbell.

​916.652.1086

For our clients using a RING wifi Video doorbell, one of the most requested features is now available - LIVE STREAM video. Now you don't have to wait for a ring or motion to activate your doorbell, you can call it up within the ring app. So far this is only for hardwired users, RING is still working on getting the battery life sorted out to support LIVE view.

Check out the AV section of the store to see the updated Arcam Pricing. If you have not listened to an Arcam, please give us a call to schedule your demo.

http://www.avsone.com/store/c6/Audio_%26_Video_Components.html

Come check these out! Schedule your demo today!

OnControls users - don't sync your remotes today, Apple misposted an update & it's causing remotes to get error messages. Should be resolved soon!



1.31.13 - The Issue has been fixed!