Savant Home Automation System Explored
The home automation solution from Savant System offers an impressive and powerful way to make control of your home. We interview the president of Savant to see just what is on offer.
Want is Savant?
Pete and Carl, our podcast team, spent the day at London's Home Technology Event 2011, wandering around the various stands checking out the latest in home automation technology.
One of the more impressive stands at the show belonged to Savant. They were demonstrating a range of top-end home automation solutions, designed to make life easier. Central to their system is their link to Apple, and the ability to control a home using the custom-designed iPhone and iPad controllers.
With a system from Savant, you can:
- Control your home's climate
- Keep an eye on your property 24/7 with the security system
- Take control of your video and audio
- Allow access to your home with door and gate controllers
- Use their intelligent lighting system
The Savant system allows you to take full control of your home either from the comfort of your settee, of remotely whilst you're out and about. You can also use the system to perform a sequence of tasks, when you get some, such as dim the lights, set the temperature, and put on the latest episode of your favourite tech podcast FrequencyCast. You can also programme the system to wake you up gently with subdues lighting and music, while the system turns on your shower and the coffee machine.
Interview with Savant's President
As demonstrated to us at the show, the Savant system is very impressive. At the show, we sat down in the simulated lounge with the boss, Jim Carroll, and he explained just what his system is capable of:
We interview Jim Carroll, President of Savant (7 minutes) |
Thanks to Jim for sparing the time to chat, and to give us some examples of how their system is in use. We like the idea of an indoor tram, to take us to our bowling alley. When we're millionaires, we'll be coming to Jim to help us equip the FrequencyCast mansion with trams, spas and whatever tech he can give us a control for.
More on Savant
At the heart of the system, is the Savant Smartcontrol, the nerve-centre of the system that controls your DVD players, TV set-top boxes, overhead projectors, home lighting systems, door entry controls, webcams, thermostats and just about anything else you can think of.
For more details, go to www.savantav.com, or take a look at this video clip, for the basics on home automation and control using Savant:
Transcript of our Savant Interview
We interview Jim Carroll, President of Savant (7 minutes) |
Pete:
We spoke to Jim Carroll, who is the President of Savant Systems, and he told us how you could control an entire house from your sofa.
Jim:
That's correct. It really ranges from very small systems to very high-end, very complicated type of solutions.
Pete:
So we've got the old clichéd environment of me coming home from a hard day's work, picking up a remote control, hitting a button - the lights dim, the TV comes on, the kettle goes on, that kind of thing. Is that the kind of stuff we're talking, or are we a bit more advanced than that these days?
Jim:
Well, maybe even a little bit better. It could be with your iPhone, we're a couple of miles away from home, you hit the home button. The garage doors open, the music comes on. We haven't figured out how to open a bottle of wine yet, but maybe we could work on that.
Pete:
Can you get me a cup of tea made for when I get home?
Jim:
Well, there are appliances now that are IP enabled, and we're seeing more and more need for that type of thing. Definitely HAVC, shades, hatches, things like that, doorways - basically if it moves, or if it's electronic and it's in your home, we can figure out a way to control it.
Pete:
So obviously, for the home environment, you can control the lights and your TV and your sound system. What else could you control with a system like the Savant system?
Jim:
Well, we're seeing things like spas and hot tubs, pools. We did a job in the States, we were controlling an electronic tram, which is, it was a 50,000 square foot home, and he was using a tram to go back and forth between several different bowling alleys they had in their homes.
Pete:
So I'm assuming that was a one-bedroom flat in London somewhere, is that right?
Jim:
Yeah, that's exactly - it was a little hobby someone had with bowling, I guess. The imagination is really what limits what's possible. Being Apple-based, running on OS10 and a general-purpose computer, maybe one of the most media-centric platforms out there, we can also do other cool things like, in my own home, my children come home from school early, and they put their passcode in - the system sends me an email and tells me my daughter's home. But when I come home myself on a Friday afternoon, using floor sensors, if I hit the button that I'm home alone, a certain genre of music comes on and plays loud. I still have to open my own bottle of wine, though.
Pete:
So you've got the Star Wars fanfare coming on when you walk through the door?
Jim:
A little Bruce Springsteen!
Pete:
Superb! So what we're actually looking at at the stand here is, effectively you've got three sections, so you've got different rooms of the house here in this little mini-show house you've put together. If I've got this right, you can also control things like the temperature. I'm looking into a camera lens at the moment, so I assume I'm streaming out over the internet and being filmed - is that right?
Jim:
That's correct. There's a lot of elements that can be managed and controlled. Simple, inexpensive IP cameras can be aggregated together, because again keep in mind, we have this great general-purpose computer. So if you can figure out a way to do it with the computer, you can do it with the Savant system.
Pete:
What did really impress me as well, we are actually sitting on a settee looking at a TV screen. If I've got this right, you can use an iPhone to overlay your system on top of a movie that you're watching - have I got that right?
Pete:
That's right - any Apple UI device - an iPod Touch, an iPad or your iPhone. What we do is, we have a blended technology with a high quality, broadcast-quality video processor, and we bring the image in, and we allow you to do anything that you would do with a traditional touchpad - adjust the heat, look at the driveway. We've done implementations where someone has a driveway sensor, someone drives up the driveway. We pop an IP camera over the image you're watching.
Pete:
So you actually get a picture-in-picture of a live picture?
Jim:
That's right.
Pete:
Wow!
Jim:
We can do an implementation where, if you push the doorbell, we'll pop a video view on the TV of who's at the front door. We'll silence the music, and then play a synthesised tone across the system, throughout the whole house, that sounds like a doorbell.
Pete:
Oh superb - how cool is that! So if I were to be looking to Savant up my entire house, is this something I would install myself, or is this something that you would install? Is it sort of a modular kit that you'd buy? How would I go about automating a home?
Jim:
We go to market through an authorised channel of electronic system contractors. If you're interested in a Savant system, you simply go to www.savantav.com, and there's a section there on the web page where you say, "Find a dealer", and we'll locate a dealer to fit your needs.
Pete:
Now obviously, there's a whole bunch of companies out there doing similar things. What would you say you offer over and above some of the other automation solutions out there?
Jim:
The most obvious thing is, we're truly the only Apple-based control and automation system. When I say Apple-based, it means natively. My software developers develop on Apple languages. We develop on IOS devices natively. We're not just doing a web page or some painting of a screen. We take full advantage of that toolkit: the swiping, the pinching, the zooming - all those gesturing things that Apple's done such a great job of teaching the world, that that's the way you interact with technology.
Pete:
I must admit, I've been playing with the iPad interface that you've got on your stand over there. It is superb - it's very intuitive; lots and lots of icons, but you have obviously security icons, light icons, heat icons, so it's been very well thought out. How long has the system been developed for? - how many years have you been doing this now?
Jim:
We've been shipping the product for four years. The company is six years old, and we spent several years prior to founding the company working on what the product would be, kind of an incubator. We owned an AV business for a while, also deploying these types of systems, and keeping copious notes for the design of this whole product.
Pete:
The million dollar question here: how much is it going to cost to kit out my home? I know that depends on how many rooms you've got and exactly what kind of stuff you've got, but what would you say would be sort of an entry-level price for starting off with home automation with your solution?
Jim:
Well, just the home automation element, I'm not talking about the TVs and the amplifiers and all those things, we have kit that is a few hundred dollars for a small controller, the price of a Mac Mini. Do you own an iPhone? - then you're all set, you're ready to rock and roll.
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