Essential Install | Habitech
From Sci-Fi To
Wi-Fi At EI Live!
Join Habitech at EI Live! to explore the next great conversation in
home control. MD Jonathan Pengilley supplies the superlatives.
True to value-added
form Habitech custom
integrates new and
established brands
to optimise the latest
control tech at EI Live!
No self-respecting Sci-Fi yarn would be complete without
the hover-car, the warp drive, the pie and mash in a
pill and above all, an eerily anthropomorphic talking
computer. Vividly memorable creations like HAL 9000
(2001: A Space Odyssey), Deep Thought (Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy) and Ship’s Computer (Star Trek)
have promoted the AI interlocutor as essential for travel
between galaxies. But while the gulf between science
fantasy and fact remains insuperable for almost every
futuristic gadget or idea (we’re not even living on the
moon yet), the ‘talking’ computer is already here and at
Habitech, we’re harnessing its power for CI.
This is not the sentient electronic human of Arthur C
Clarke’s imagination. Neither is it the quasi-experimental
work of IBM’s cognitive ‘Watson’ platform, or the amazing
evolution in reinforcement learning by Google’s Deep
Mind – or anything with an Elon Musk fi nger in it. I’m
talking about a clear and present frontier-busting reality,
capable of turning speech into cash, in operation at our
Basingstoke HQ and making its UK show debut at EI Live!.
Now We’re Talking Control
Amazon’s Alexa Voice Services (AVS) is just about the
smartest and the most sorted voice control system
available. The company’s willingness to share the tech
means that many big brands as well as smaller IoT wizards
like Simple Control are rushing to integrate its space-age
magic. Our latest recruit to the ProNet networking stable
16 | April 2017
is a beautiful fi t because, like Alexa, Simple Control is a
cloud-based control system communicating over Wi-Fi
using IP. And like Alexa it may well defi ne the future
direction of home control.
Simple Magic
For a moment, park everything you’ve come to understand
about home control over the last 15 years: the proprietary
software, central controller, serial and IR commands,
miles of wire in all directions and programmable remotes.
Simple Control changes everything with an ‘open’ App-
based environment on familiar and ubiquitous iOS
phones and tablets, mobilising IP control functionality
that already exists. It recognises that virtually every new
home entertainment device from smart TV screens and
AV receivers, to light bulbs and controllers, heating
systems and multi-room audio setups has an IP identity
and connects over Wi-Fi to the cloud via a control App.
Simple Control ties them all together. The world’s largest IP,
serial and IR libraries provide preloaded and predesigned
graphics, protocols and control codes for tens of thousands
of devices. This means that most smart products are already
compatible. In place of endless, tedious programming,
Simple Control just works. And because it marks a shift in
the entire control culture from a rigid prescriptive model
to a more liberal IoT cosmos, integrators can manage
client systems remotely, saving cost while sustaining the
essential service elements of client relationships.
10th-11th May 2017, Sandown Park, Surrey. Sponsored by