Welcome to Our Smart Home Technology Blog

Getting started with smart home technology is incredibly exciting. You get to pick out devices and solutions that will make your home more beautiful, energy-efficient, secure, and comfortable! But before you start picking out the fabrics for your motorized shades, ask yourself this question: “Is my home ready for smart home automation?”

Many homeowners throughout the Prosper, Texas area don’t realize that standard electrical wiring may not cut it for advanced automation technology. Even new construction doesn’t typically come with wiring suitable for reliably operating smart technology.

But don’t despair! There’s a simple solution in the form of prewiring services. Below, we answer the most common questions that homeowners have about prewiring. 

What is Prewiring?

Many smart home contractors (including DeVance Electronic Lifestyle) offer prewiring services that ensure your home has everything it needs to support all of its smart devices—both now and in the future as technology gets more advanced. Typically, these services include an initial assessment to get an idea of the quality of your home’s wiring. Based on that information, we may run new wires that are capable of handling whatever your smart devices need!

Why is Prewiring Necessary?

Standard wiring in homes often doesn’t go beyond AC power lines, TV cables, and maybe some phone lines. However, the majority of smart home devices operate using low voltage cabling. If your home is wired with the right types of cables, the sky is the limit for what you can automate!

Have you started planning for the holidays yet? We all feel the added time pressure involved in buying gifts for everyone on our lists, booking our flights, preparing food to take to potlucks and the various demands of the season.

When you’re traveling and relaxing with family, we don’t want you to waste a moment worrying about your Dallas, TX, home’s safety. Curious to find out how a comprehensive home security system steps in and mitigates risks while you’re away? Keep reading!

SEE ALSO: 3 Benefits You Can Expect From a Professional Smart Home Installation

Risk #1 - Porch Piracy

FedEx says that, according to a recent industry study, 75% of Americans are concerned about porch piracy today. During the holidays, we have even more reason to worry, as millions of us order online. Many of your packages will arrive sometime when you’re far away, sitting on your stoop for days.

Have you been considering a whole-house audio installation for your Frisco, TX, home? Maybe you’ve worked with us before for a single-room setup, or you are starting anew with a fresh construction that you want to enhance with a robust, wired installation.

We’ll show you why DeVance Electronic Lifestyle serves as your premier resource for all things audio, and we’ll show you why you should trust us for every sonic experience.

SEE ALSO: 3 Creative Ways to Use Your New Audio Distribution System

A Brief Day in the Life with Whole House Audio

Have you ever imagined how life would be different if you could wander through your house and experience high-quality audio in every room? We’re about to give you a brief tour of a perfect day after your DeVance whole-home audio installation, so keep reading.

It’s 9 a.m. on a Saturday, and you’re just waking up. Your bedroom speakers play your favorite dance playlist. As you walk down to the kitchen to grab your first cup of coffee, you can keep your energetic music going.

An effective and reliable smart home automation solution has a lot of pieces and parts all working together to add convenience and comfort to your home. One often overlooked aspect of this complex system is the home network. In this blog, we discuss three aspects of home networking that are vitally important for ensuring your smart home operates smoothly, whether you’re in Highland Park or another Texas area.

SEE ALSO: Explore What it Means to Live with Smart Home Automation

Speed

The speed of your home network is directly tied to the speed of your devices. Each piece of equipment might say it can reach lightning fast speeds, but if your network is throttling your bandwidth, your smart home automation system will never operate at full performance.  DeVance can optimize your home network and remove the obstacles that are causing network throttling. By streamlining your home network, your devices will be able to reach their full speed capabilities.

Reliability

When you’re streaming television shows on Netflix or watching a movie in your dedicated home theater, you’ll be able to enjoy the entire show without any lagging or delays in audio or video. However, 4K streaming requires a lot of bandwidth, and your network simply may not be up to the task.  Often, the source of video lagging during streaming is a lack of strong Wi-Fi. DeVance can install wireless access points at strategic locations throughout your home to ensure that each smart device has a strong and reliable Internet connection.

Scalability

Your home network needs to be ready not only for today’s technology, but also for tomorrow’s. You don’t want to be one step behind the latest smart home automation technology simply because your home network isn’t capable of supporting more devices. Using the latest standards and advances in home networking technology will ensure that whenever you want to upgrade your smart home automation system, your network won’t hold you back.

If the idea of living in a “smart house” is appealing to you, then you’re in luck. In recent years, more and more smart devices have been developed that make it super simple for you to manage every aspect of your home, from the lights to the television to even the window shades! Below, we cover some of the most common ways to upgrade regular parts of your Keller, Texas house to a full smart home control system. 

Thermostat

Thermostats are one of the most popular and common types of smart home technologies. A smart thermostat allows you to manage the temperature throughout your home anywhere, anytime. Just pull out your smartphone and select the temperature you want. Many of these thermostats learn your preferences over time, so they adjust automatically to keep your home at just the right temperature for comfort.

Lighting

Go beyond basic light switches with a lighting control system that lets you create the perfect lighting environment in every room at the push of a button. Every fixture, from the ceiling fan to the accent lamps, can be managed by your smartphone, a tablet, or handheld remote. Each fixture’s brightness is adjustable, which is useful for energy efficiency—you don’t have to waste energy blasting the lights in rooms that have plenty of natural sunlight, for example.

SEE ALSO: How to Get Started with Lighting and Shading Control

Blind and shade control

With motorized shades, you never have to manually open or close the blinds or drapes again. Instead, you can have your smart home control system automatically adjust the shades throughout the day. And when you’re relaxing on the couch and the setting sun causes a glare, you don’t have to break out of the comfort zone to close the shades—instead, tap that option on your smartphone and go back to relaxing.

No matter how large or complex the project, a media room is a significant investment for any homeowner. Top-notch A/V equipment costs thousands of dollars, and there’s the time and effort required to design the room and install the various components. If you want a media room in your Dallas, TX, home, you want the best home theater systems and other features you can afford. Here are four guidelines to follow as you begin your media room project.

SEE ALSO: Does Your Home Have the Proper Wiring for Smart Tech?

USE A 4K DISPLAY

4K video content is much more readily available than in years past, and the price of 4K projectors and TVs has dropped significantly. With these facts in mind, a 4K display of some type is the logical choice for your home theater. We work with only the best brands to meet your display needs.

To give you the best possible viewing experience, it’s important to choose a display that’s the right size for your room. One tried-and-true guideline is that the distance between the screen and the viewer should be 1.5 to 3 times the size of the screen. In practical terms, this means that if you have about 10 feet (120 inches) between your display and the audience, you shouldn’t buy a display bigger than 6-7 feet (72-84 inches).

SURROUND SOUND IS CRUCIAL

Obviously, image quality is important when it comes to your media room, but quality sound matters just as much. To ensure you get quality sound, you’ll want surround sound for your space. At the very least, a 5.1 speaker setup is crucial. This speaker setup includes 5 main speaker channels (front, left, center, and two other channels placed somewhere behind or to the side) and one subwoofer to amplify the bass channel. These speakers can be placed on stands throughout the room, mounted in the walls or ceilings, or stand freely on the floor; go with the options that best suits your home’s aesthetic.

What do you want the focal point of your home to be? To draw attention to a piece of art, a beautiful rug, or an antique chair you need to eliminate the distractions. In the interior design world, technology tends to be an obstacle. Designers are always trying to hide all of the tech since it can be an eyesore. Too many switches will create “wall acne” and cords, wires, or unsightly black boxes don’t exactly match the theme for your McKinney, Texas home. In this blog, we will focus on how to make certain elements of your lights and shades disappear with smart home automation. Keep reading to learn all about it. 

SEE ALSO: 5 Household Items to Make Smarter with an RTI System

Smart Shades

For this part of your home you won’t be hiding the roller fabric, or drapes, you’ll be hiding the motor that moves the shades up and down. Some motorized shade companies install a big box on the top of the window, which can look like a giant obstruction on the wall. To solve this issue, DeVance hides the motor in an enclosure—which is like a pocket inside the wall. You won’t see the motor or wires at all, instead everything is hidden and your family can focus on the beautiful fabric over the window. Smart shading also eliminates those hanging cords used to adjust the curtains. Instead, you’ll use a small remote control or your mobile device to open or chose them.

Smart Lighting

A distributed audio system lets you play your favorite songs in any area of your Highland Park, TX, home. Wouldn’t you love to host a party where the speakers pulsated with the same beat throughout the house and the patio, playing your favorite song for the entire party to hear? What if you could pause your movie halfway through and resume it in another room because your audio-video equipment was perfectly in sync?

Welcome to the world of whole-home, high-performance audio. If you’re starting out with a single-room setup, and the prospect of adding music to every room feels daunting right now.

That’s why we always recommend enlisting a tech integrator’s help before trying to DIY your multi-room audio. We partner with the best brands, such as Origin Acoustics and McIntosh, and we know how to strategically wire speakers for the optimal sonic experience. Keep reading to see a few options to weigh when we look at your home.

SEE ALSO: What Is Whole-House Audio Video?

#1: You Enjoy Entertaining

You’re that person that can’t imagine a single holiday passing without throwing that one party that everyone talks about. Everyone has a different entertaining style: You might go all out with a five-course dinner party or chill on the sofa during a game day event. Perhaps you decorate for elaborate themed soirees. Or maybe you convert your biggest room into a dancing space where you can drink cocktails with friends all night long. No matter what, your Control4 system facilitates playing and pausing music, switching tracks, adjusting volume, and anything else you need to manage.

When we talk about multi-room audio, also known as audio distribution, we often mention the most popular, common way to enjoy it – through streaming services like TIDAL, Deezer, Pandora and a host of others. Fortunately, our choice partners for home automation systems, Crestron, RTI and Control4, are compatible with multiple streaming applications, letting you find countless tracks to play anywhere in your home. While our clients love their music-streaming services, we’ve discovered more ways to engage with your favorite media, using home automation, high-end speakers, audio receivers and, of course, a customized installation.

Did you know that you can think beyond digital content and take full advantage of your home audio-video system in more creative ways? Keep reading to learn what we’d love to help you explore firsthand in your Highland Park, TX, home

SEE ALSO: What Is Whole-House Audio Video?

Turntables

Old equipment, meet new technology. If you miss the long-gone days of listening to music from retro devices, we think you'll be delighted that these once-antique music players are making a comeback.