7th November, 2008
How will the iPhone change home automation?
Brent Butterworth
Some insiders in the home automation business predict that a revolutionary change is set to sweep the industry. And others say it probably won’t be such a big deal.
The technology in question is the iPhone, which home automation manufacturers are starting to integrate into their systems. The idea makes obvious sense. After all, from a technical standpoint, the iPhone (and its cellphone-less cousin, the iPod Touch) isn’t terribly different from a wireless touchscreen.
But in other ways, the iPhone differs radically from a typical home automation touchscreen. It’s small: The screen measures only 3.5 inches diagonally, compared with 4 to 17 inches for a typical touchscreen. And it’s cheap: just $199 with a service contract (or $229 for the iPod Touch), compared to as much as $10,000 for a big touchscreen.
We wondered, though: How thrilled would systems integrators be to sell a $229 device when they used to sell one priced 10 to 40 times as much? And how much would their clients enjoy trying to control an entire home from a 3.5-inch, 480×320-pixel screen?
THE PROS
The big advantage of the iPhone in home automation is portability. You can slip it into your pocket and carry it around effortlessly. As Jim Carroll, president and cofounder of Savant Systems, described: “I can be in my media room and control that experience. I can use the same device to manage the media from my pool area. I can watch videos, listen to iTunes. There’s not a [touchscreen] remote I’m aware of that you can carry around which gives you access to and control of all those things.”
To Jeff Singer, marketing communications manager at Crestron, the biggest advantage is that the iPhone also works outside the home. “In the home, it communicates with your system via WiFi, but out in the world, it can communicate using the phone network. Anywhere in the world, our customers can see the lighting levels in their homes, the positions of the shades, the temperatures of all the rooms in the house, the status of the home alarm systems—and from anywhere in the world, they can change all that.”
Besides its unrivaled mobility, the iPhone has another advantage: public awareness. Many people don’t even know home automation even exists, but everyone’s heard of the iPhone—and 13 million have been sold to date. “The sex appeal of this is huge,” Carroll reported. “We’re signing up dealers because customers are asking for this kind of solution.”
THE CONS
The limited real estate of that little screen does demand some redesign of the control GUIs, but Singer and Carroll both say their companies don’t consider this a significant problem. “You may have to have a second page where before you could have just one,” Carroll explained. “But the resolution is high and with the number of colors it supports, you can do a lot with it.” Savant’s iPhone-based systems also use the TVs in a home to display control screens, in order to show more buttons on a single page.
However, Carroll and Singer strongly disagree in their predictions about how the iPhone will affect future system designs.
“I think the iPhone is definitely going to cut into sales of those things [touchscreens],” Carroll said. “Customers are cutting down on the number of remotes they’re using. People might have eight [touchscreen] remotes for everything in their homes, but if there’s only three people living there they might only need three iPhones or Touches.”
Singer doesn’t buy it. “That hasn’t been our experience,” he said. “Have our touchpanel sales been impacted because we offer control from PCs and laptops? Absolutely not. The iPhone is just another option. And when you have more options, you have more opportunities to meet or exceed the client’s expectations.”
Likewise, Singer sees no effect on margins for Crestron dealers. “The iPhone control app is absolutely free to dealers and programmers,” he noted. “How does that affect margin? However they want it to. If you want to throw it in to sweeten a deal, you can do that and it won’t cost you anything. If you see it as an opportunity to increase your margin, the markup can be whatever the client’s willing to pay.”
Asked if the iPhone will affect margins, Carroll replied, “I think in one sense yes and another no. In our implementation, it requires a server at the other end, which the customer will need to buy. And keep in mind that the iPhone is doing everything a touchpanel would do, so they make a margin on the integration as well.”
So the effect of the iPhone on home automation integrator margins remains an open question. But with Sooloos, Speakercraft, Proficient Audio, and others now offering iPhone control options, there seems to be no doubt that the iPhone will become an important interface—and perhaps even the primary interface—in homes of the future. As Carroll put it, “I think it’s a fundamental game changer.”
Posted at 12:28 am |
On November 7, 2008 at 3:42 pm Chad Shell said:
November 7, 2008 at 3:42 pm
With Crestron, we’ve been doing control like this with phones using Windows Mobile for years. What we’ve found in the past is that client’s really like it, but more as a toy or to be able to show off to their friends what they have. I don’t believe we have any clients who’ve really made much use out of this interface_ which works pretty well on phones like the Audiovox Pocket PC phones. The majority of them that use it tend to use it primarily when coming in & out of town to do things like HVAC control.
That being said, I do believe the iPhone apps will be slightly more popular then apps that we’ve been doing with Windows Mobile phones, primarily because of the sheer number of iPhones in the market already as well asthe fact that people that own iPhones are true electronic toy geeks who spend a very large part of their days geeking over their iPhone; constantly playing with them (which is the real reason why the batteries don’t seem to last that long).
I still have to agree with Crestron though. The chance of iPhones really cutting much into panel sales is slim.; perhaps a keypad sale for some basic control but to try to run your AV system, cable TV tuners, etc. is just not practical & anyone purchasing a control system can easily see this if the sales person is doing their job to inform them about the problems with using an iPhone for control of these devices.
On November 8, 2008 at 1:02 pm Wizard said:
November 8, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Do some research. Many other laready offer iPhone control like Convergent Living…the leader in IP-backbone control systems. and instead of yet another navigational paradigm, it is exactly as if you were in home….and free if users have the SideKick controllers. Portability plus.
On November 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm Brent Butterworth said:
November 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm
I’m sure many home automation and multiroom A/V companies besides the ones I mentioned are either developing or already shipping iPhone/iPod Touch interfaces. That’s why I said “…and others.”
On November 27, 2008 at 2:08 am Sam Clark said:
November 27, 2008 at 2:08 am
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