Smart Thinking

Smart devices are part of everyday life, with an estimated 13 billion connected devices in our homes. Julia Millen spoke to Control 4 about how they are raising the bar with integrated smart technology.

With such a plethora of smart devices available, it’s unsurprising that many disparate smart devices don’t work well together, therefore dispelling the smart technology promise and instead frustrating consumers seeking easy, convenient products.

Control4 Smart Home OS 3 was launched in May 2019 as an operating system for the modern smart home, and has quickly become the automation platform of choice for many installers and consumers by breaking the barriers of smart home adoption. Homeowners can enjoy Control4 systems that are customisable and can scale to the needs of the family, whether it’s a single-room entertainment experience or a whole-home automation system in a mansion.

Building on years of operational experience, Control4 Smart Home OS 3 brings new levels of thoughtful design to raise expectations for smart homes.

The Favourites feature recognises that each smart home is unique and therefore enables users to prioritise their most vital and frequently used icons by bringing them to the main “dashboard” screen for each room. For example, in the master bedroom, Favourite the front door lock, garage doors, and security cameras to ensure the home is secure before going to bed.
Anything across the entire home can be added as a Favourite – and shown on the front of your interface of choice; including your phone, touchscreen, or remote.

Additionally, OS 3 icons visually represent the status of the connected device and you can instantly see what’s happening and take immediate control, so you can see only the lights that are on, the blinds that are open, and the doors and security zones that are secure - which is necessary when you have many connected devices throughout the home.

Personalising and tailoring the system to suit the needs of developing family life enables consumers to edit or create smart home scenes, set schedules to automate devices, and modify how devices interact.
With an elegant look and crisp sound, OS 3 has reimagined multi-room entertainment, permitting your music to play throughout the home, with the ease of one-touch access to the most popular streaming services. Plus, OS 3 offers native support of MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) to bring you the highest-quality audio experience through streaming services like TIDAL.

To enhance the powerful experience of Control4 Smart Home OS 3; in November 2019, Control4  launched the sleek, intuitive, Neeo Remote.

Neeo is a sleek, intuitive remote control for the Control4 Smart Home OS, giving homeowners fast access to the things they use most, including their favourite streaming services, most-watched TV stations, playlists and smart home scenes. Neeo is the first Control4 handheld remote to combine the benefits of hard buttons and a touchscreen, providing an elegant smart home interface fully personalised to meet the unique interests and devices for any home.

The Neeo Remote is as durable and practical as it is beautiful. Neeo was meticulously designed to set a new standard for luxury smart home interfaces. It is built from machined aluminium designed to protect the edge-to-edge touchscreen making the device incredibly durable; whilst images and icons on the three-inch, high-resolution, LCD touchscreen are crisp and bright to enable quick one-touch navigation.

Neeo was built to harness powerful software designed specifically to orchestrate and manage the modern smart home. Control4 Smart Home OS 3 unifies connected devices from major brands, weaves them together for simplicity, and provides a singular voice, touch, and hand-held interface for the whole home. Family members in a Control4 OS 3 powered home have one-touch control and at-a-glance views of virtually every device through interfaces such as voice-control, a unified app, and now the Neeo Remote.

Control4 OS 3 personalisation automatically extends through to Neeo, including the ability to favourite and use one-touch icons. The touchscreen reduces the number of buttons on the Neeo Remote, making it easier to use. This combination of touchscreen and buttons makes Neeo an ideal universal remote control as its icon-driven touchscreen is very intuitive.

“Neeo is as easy to use as it is beautiful. And, unlike the pile of remotes we’ve accumulated, it’s certainly not an eyesore — it’s actually a piece of technology that I don’t mind lying around for guests to see. I’m sure it will even be a conversation starter for many of our friends and family when they come to visit,” said Jennifer Reed, Control4 beta customer.