Here we are a quarter of a century later, and we have so many more options at our disposal. There are dozens of home systems to choose from, from the low-end to highly advanced systems with stratospheric pricing. Not surprisingly, many of these all-in-one systems are not compatible with one another, as they each have their own proprietary operating system and hardware. So if you like the lighting control from company A, but want the cool color touchscreen audio interface from company B you’re out of luck. Well maybe not. The latest systems coming out are using a ubiquitous computer technology called IP control. This stands for Internet Protocol, and it’s steadily taking over the consumer electronics market, and appliances aren’t too far behind. Because IP is a set standard, one company’s audio server can talk to another company’s touchscreen control interface. We aren’t completely there quite yet, but there is one company that’s betting its whole existence on affordable, yet complete systems that work with non-proprietary standards, and it’s called Control4.

Founded by seasoned industry veterans, Control4, offers lighting control, multi-room audio, home theater control, climate control and security control. As a whole this isn’t a new idea; companies such as Crestron, Elan and AMX offer control systems for most of this stuff. What sets Control4 apart is that they offer these capabilities at up to 1/3rd the cost. Another great Control4 coup is the ability to add complete home automation and entertainment to homes and condos without any existing wiring – via WiFi and a new standard called Zigbee, more about this later.

I was very intrigued by the Control4 booth at an industry trade show in September of 2004, so I signed on to become a dealer. I went to Control4 training at the company’s headquarters near Salt Lake City a few months later. At this point, nothing was really shipping, and the control software was still buggy. I leaned what I needed, and went home. It wasn’t until almost a year later that I received all the products I had ordered, along with the latest software. I wasn’t about to try out any of this stuff in a client’s home without testing it on my family first. Fortunately ours was almost a complete retro install, as we had no Cat 5 wire pulled to any of the touchscreens, or lighting modules. Even the main media controller (the product that controls the whole system) didn’t have a hard wire connection to anything. So we were the perfect guinea pigs for this test. The only other product we are waiting for is the wireless thermostat, which should be shipping by the time you read this.