Control4 announces Control4 Smart Home OS 3. Control4 Smart Home OS 3 is designed to unify hundreds of connected devices within the home, control them all from a single platform, deliver the personalization homeowners want, and facilitate the professional support smart home technology needs.
The modern smart home made simple and intuitive
Control4 Smart Home OS 3 is designed to simplify the use of many connected devices throughout the home, exceeding expectations for how people livewith technology. OS 3 offers more than a thousand new features and capabilities including fluid, refined, and intuitive interfaces providing one-touch control for favorite devices and scenes, at-a-glance views for security and lighting, one-touch music and video streaming, and more, all in a singular platform across Control4 and third-party products.
It's all just smart stuff without a Smart Home OS
The industry is at a tipping point; pundits are forecasting by 2020 there will be 13 billion connected devices in today’s homes. The rapid introduction of these products fractures the smart home ecosystem and compounds complexity. Disparate smart devices don’t work together nor meet the promise of easy, convenient or better, and consumers and their families have been left frustrated.
"The Control4 Smart Home OS is designed to remove complexity," said Control4 Senior Vice President of Products and Services Charlie Kindel. "Every home is a mix of products from a variety of companies, a Smart Home OS embraces this reality, providing broad choice rather than creating a collection of tiny walled gardens that limit homeowners.”
Boasting a broad and deep ecosystem, Control4 OS 3 brings support for more than 13,500 third-party devices and 7,500 Control4 SDDP-embedded products. Built as smart home infrastructure, OS 3 scales to the needs of the family, whether it’s a single-room entertainment experience or a whole-home automation system in a mansion.
Control4 Smart Home OS 3 enriches the real-life connected home experience. By aiming to encompass all of the home’s connected devices, it breaks through many of the barriers of smart home adoption. “There is a delight—almost a sense of magic—when technology comes together and genuinely enhances our lives,” said Charlie. “And right now, only Control4 Smart Home OS 3 can deliver on that promise for the home.”
Smart living is installed by professionals and personalized by owners
Achieving the elegance and sophistication homeowners want requires the experience of a professional installer. But only a family knows the nuances of their day-to-day lifestyles. Control4 Smart Home OS facilitates professional installation to make sure everything works together, while empowering families to make their smart home experience uniquely their own.
“For more than 15 years Control4 has held steadfast in the belief that meeting the expectation of a true smart home requires professional installation,” stated Control4 Chairman and CEO Martin Plaehn. “We have relentlessly built a network of trained professionals, and today Control4 has more than 200 Control4 Certified Showrooms where consumers can walk in and experience OS 3. Control4 has nearly 6,000 Authorized Dealers, OS 3 leverages the talent and skill of tens of thousands of smart home pros around the world to install, update, and manage smart home technology for families.”
Control4 Smart Home OS 3 Highlights:
Building on years of operational experience, Control4 Smart Home OS 3 brings new levels of thoughtful design to raise expectations for smart homes.
- Introducing "Favorites", OS 3 gives homeowners the ability to bring virtually everything in the home to the top of the room in the mobile app, touch screen, and TV. Favorites provides one-touch control and, more importantly, homeowners can now see whether the home is secure or lights are on anywhere in the home without tapping.
- "Favorites" provide homeowners the flexibility to prioritize the devices for each room. In a living room, the news station can be at the top of the app, where the over-island lights show up first in the kitchen view.
- Simply press and hold to Favorite a device, service, scene, or playlist in any room. Drag icons to reorganize or delete them from the screen with a simple tap, interactions any mobile user is familiar with.
- Assemble whole-home dashboards for at-a-glance views of the most vital devices from any room. In the master bedroom, Favorite the front door lock, garage doors, and security cameras to ensure the home is secure before going to bed.
- Easily see only the lights that are on, the blinds that are open, and the doors and security zones that are secure, a necessary capability required when you have many connected devices throughout the home.
- Homeowners can personalize their system and tailor it to their needs as they live and grow with it. Edit or create smart home scenes, set schedules to automate devices, and modify how devices interact.
- OS 3 has reimagined multi-room entertainment. With OS 3 share your music throughout the home with an elegant look, crisp sound, and the ease of one-touch access to the most popular streaming services. Stream video with the same intuitive approach, just relax and watch.
- Music and video take a prominent position with Active Media located at the top of the screen, showing music controls, and track details right at the front.
- Streaming music and video throughout the home is simple with all-new Sessions to easily add or remove rooms, adjust the volume everywhere or within a single room.
- OS 3 adds native support for streaming high-resolution audio in Control4 systems with the addition of MQA (Master Quality Audio). Now homeowners can stream better-than-CD quality music through TIDAL Masters and listen to their own MQA-encoded music collection.
- Advanced security system management — With unified lock management, lock users, and PINs are now easily managed through OS 3 for all locks (with no need to create and edit users for each lock). Create a user, assign a PIN and a schedule, and apply the changes to all locks installed in the home.
- Coordinated shade control — New blind and shade options with more than 350 new icons that represent the wide variety of ways window coverings operate, let users easily see all shades that are open, and with one-button press, close them across the house.
- Users can set a different wallpaper for every room, choosing from a variety of designer-approved images or their own photos matched to their home and lifestyle.
- Dealer Tools — Control4 has always led the industry with tools that enable swift, easy, and reliable deployment. With OS 3, dealers will enjoy enhancements that further simplify programming, reduce repetitive tasks, and speed up deployment.
- Thoughtfully refined and optimized, each interface is designed for the different ways a customer will use a mobile phone, a touch screen mounted on the wall, or a hand-held remote and a TV. The mobile phone is optimized for one-hand control in portrait mode, while the TV interface is focused on the entertainment experience from the couch.