Kitchen & Bath Business - February/March 2020 - 30

TECH SAVVY

Meaningful
Home Automation

Industry professionals talk lighting,
garages, geofencing & climate control

I RECENTLY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY to chat
with four smart home experts about everything
from smart lightbulbs to whole-home automation
and everything in between. As everyone knows,
the smart home market today is gigantic and
growing exponentially.
Carley Knobloch is a smart home expert based
in Los Angeles. She is a contributor on the "Today
Show" and on HGTV, and you can find her blog
at CarleyK.com. Her business, Carley K., creates
content around smart home tech that makes it
inclusive, fun and easy to understand.
Molly Switzer is principal designer and owner
at Molly N Switzer Designs in Portland, Ore. She
is president of the Columbia River Chapter of the
NKBA and an Arts & Advisory Board member
for George Fox University.
Danielle Karr is the Control4 architect and
designer program manager. Control4 provides
whole-home automation for homes of any size.
Karr was previously with Vivant, a DIY controller manufacturer.
Chris Young is a Certified Networking Professional based in Montreal and a self-proclaimed
home automation geek; hence his business name
- HomeKitGeek.com.

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30_KBB_0220_TechSavvy.indd 30

DIY & INTEROPERABILITY

I was curious about the DIY smart home world, so I asked Young for the latest scoop. He compared Apple, Google and Amazon Smart Home set-ups.
"Device discovery on Apple is by far the easiest in the industry, and Apple
HomeKit is by far the most powerful," he said. "With Apple Homekit, we
can use motion sensors, contact sensors, temp sensors and air-quality sensors.
And HomeKit works with state-of-the-art lighting components."
There's a lot of talk these days about inter-operability, so I asked Karr about
Control4's smart home controllers and their ability to connect all devices.
"One of the most important things when building a smart home is to pick
an operating system that has an open platform,"she added."Some companies
choose to not work with other brands or products besides their own, and I
think that makes it hard for a homeowner to get the smart home lifestyle that
will make them truly happy."
I also asked her how the smart home industry has changed in the last 10 years.
"The number of devices and products now available is the biggest change
in home automation industry,"she said."Gadgets are becoming less gadgety
and more meaningful."
FAVORITE SMART HOME DEVICES

GETTING STARTED WITH HOME AUTOMATION

Knobloch says the smart home has come a long
way. She started out automating hers with Sonos speakers, TiVO and music. When she was
ready to add more, she brought in a Control4
system to manage the existing tech, as well as
the new alarm system, two fireplaces, smart
shades and lighting.
"When I first started talking about the smart
home eight years ago, it was all about guys with
their cool AV systems and their home theaters,
and it was completely alienating to most women,"
explained Knobloch. "That has changed."
Lighting is a gateway into a smart home. Switzer's advice: Don't be afraid to learn with your clients, just start the conversation with lighting and
ask the client what frustrates them about it.This is
the process she used in her recent year-long total
home automation remodel project. She led her

homeowners, the integrator and the general contractor through the design
and installation processes as she learned on the go.

SCOTT KOEHLER is
a 27-year veteran of
the kitchen and bath
industry and owner of
Dream Kitchen Builders, a design-build firm
doing business in North
Carolina.

Everyone has a top pick, and for Knobloch it's the garage door because it
solves so many problems.
"If a neighbor wants to drop something off, I can just pop my garage open
from wherever I am, and they can throw it in there and it will be safe," she
said."The kids have the garage door opener on their app so they have keyless
entry into the house. I can see if someone left the garage door open, and I
know when my husband is home from work because I get alerts."
One of Switzer's favorite automations from her latest project is geofencing.
It's kind of like GPS for the home; the system always knows where you are.
Sensors are mounted to the homeowners' phones to activate and deactivate
commands or rules. The rules of operation for the automations were written by a coder (Switzer recommends that coders are always in on high-end
projects). When her client drives up the driveway, the garage lights come
on, the garage door opens, the low lights all come on like toe-kick lights, etc.
Everything between the garage and the master bedroom is lit. All actions turn
on based on his location, and one switch turns everything off. Switzer said that
the Savant Smart Home Controller was a good choice for the complexity of
the project - claiming it's a boutique-level brain for the home.
Young's favorite home automation is in his master bedroom. In Montreal,
the winters are very dry and the summers are very humid. He has set up a DIY
system with a humidifier that turns on using a smart outlet and a bathroom
vent controlled by sensors. Everything is automated.
I was surprised when Knobloch told me she had broken up with Siri and
Alexa and Google Home, and they've all agreed to just be friends. Interestingly, voice is not the interface of preference for these four experts. Young,
one of the biggest Apple fans I know, is not a fan of Siri. He claims that Siri
has trouble understanding him, it can't detect room context, and the phone
cannot be assigned to a single room.The experts prefer the iPad, touch pads,
keypads and light switch pad interfaces.
The global market for the smart home in 2020 is conservatively estimated
to exceed $50 billion, up from $35 billion in 2019. Billions will be spent on the
research and development of many new products that have the potential to
improve our lifestyles, save us time and allow us to stay in our homes longer.
Kitchen designers who want to tap into the smart home industry might do well

to follow Switzer's advice, "Let listening to a client guide the process."

/ FEB.-MARCH 2020 / KBBONLINE.COM / The official publication of NKBA (NKBA.org) and KBIS (KBIS.com)

2/12/20 5:13 PM

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Kitchen & Bath Business - February/March 2020

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