HOW A CONTROL4 SMART HOME HELPS SPREAD HOLIDAY CHEER

HOW A CONTROL4 SMART HOME HELPS SPREAD HOLIDAY CHEER

With the holiday decorating, shopping, and cooking in full swing, there has never been a better time to automate your home. Home automation can help you manage the wonderful chaos, entertaining your family when they come to visit, setting that special ambiance that inspires the holiday spirit, and keeping your valuables and loved ones more secure than ever. Control4 can help you custom design your smart home to sync with your existing products and spread the holiday cheer.

Light Up Your Home

Home automation allows you to step up your game when it comes to holiday decorating and setting the vibe for the season. You can sync your lights to your holiday playlist, customize your holiday tunes to play at certain times of day, and completely control the light patterns and colors to fit your decorating visions. Home automation can help you make all of your holiday decorating dreams come true.

Share the Classics

An automated home theater system helps you share the classics like never before. With the push of a button on the Control4 Touch Screen, your living room sets itself up for prime viewing. The shades lower, the lights dim or turn off, and the movie begins. If cooking and other activities are going on throughout the home, no one has to be left out of the viewing-you can stream the classics to all of the rooms. If you prefer newer movies, you can also stream the latest hits or newest holiday releases.

Spend More Time with Loved Ones

With smart timers, alerts, and synced appliances, you can spend less time turning things on and off and more time enjoying the company of your loved ones. With the right oven, you can keep an eye on what’s cooking, control your oven and stove settings, and receive alerts about the food right from your phone. You can also control all of the lights in the house from your Control4 Touch Screen and set up timers to lock doors, change the temperature, raise or lower blinds, and many other functions.

Sleep in Peace

When it is time for bed, an automated home can set security systems, lower blinds, and lock doors with the push of a “Goodnight” button. With compatible cameras tied to the Control4 system, you can look at security views or check in on the baby, right from the Control4 App. You can also adjust fans and make sure all lights are off from the comfort of your bed.
If you are interested in finding out how a personalized Control4 smart home can make the holidays more enjoyable—along with every other day of the year—give us a call at 703-883-0970 or contact us.

 

Commercial Surveillance Equipment Helps Protect Your Assets

Commercial Surveillance Equipment Helps Protect Your Assets

Installing commercial surveillance equipment is a powerful tool small business can use to guard against theft. Large office buildings and big businesses have had the benefit of surveillance for many years, but small businesses sometimes left vulnerable, due to their size and budget. Most everyone is familiar with the types of cameras ensconced in black domes in the ceiling of big-box stores, from which loss-prevention personnel track customers’ every move. Takeout restaurants and convenience stores, both often open into the wee hours of the morning, are also well-known for their tiny ceiling-mounted cameras pointed at the registers.

But what about boutique clothing stores, sole-proprietor restaurants and other, more modest operations? As a small business owner, you may not have the funding to hire a security guard, and low-budget video equipment might not be adequate for your needs. What are your options?

Options to Suit Your Budget

The surveillance equipment you purchase for your small business can be basic and straightforward, or high-tech and sophisticated — it all depends on your wants and needs. Your first determination should be what types of incidents you want to guard against. Some business owners want a camera trained on their front door to monitor the comings and goings of customers. This can help cut down not only on shoplifting, but on many other types of suspicious or dangerous activity as well.

Another common use of surveillance cameras is to monitor exchanges at the register. Hopefully your business will never be the target of a robbery, but keeping an eye on monetary transactions is also helpful in remedying fraudulent transactions. Reliable surveillance equipment can provide you with the proof you need when facing losses due to stolen credit cards, bad checks, counterfeit currency, employee theft and other types of collusion.

Installation can be complicated, so you want a professional to do it to make sure it’s done right and works properly. To avoid the unkempt appearance of wires and electrical outlets to operate your equipment, you can opt to have it installed within your walls or ceiling, or you can even purchase wireless equipment. Some ceiling-mounted cameras contain several lenses, allowing you to monitor multiple areas from one central location. Color recording, varying focus and tamper-proof domes are also available features with some systems.

 

Live Tracking

Various recording options are available as well. Your video equipment re-record each day, or you can have your daily records stored for the period of time you feel is sufficient for your business. You can also opt for live, remote surveillance of your property through a security contract, if you have concerns about the safety of your customers or employees. You can also use your smartphone or another device to log on and monitor your business remotely at any time.

Theatron installs surveillance equipment for large and small businesses in the Greater Washington DC Metro area. Protect your employees and customers, and guard against theft and other crimes by calling the experts at Theatron to find out what type of commercial surveillance equipment will best fit the needs of your business.

Wirepath Security Cameras

WirePath Security Cameras

Our favorite brand when it comes to surveillance is WirePath. Their wide variety of cameras and DVRs offer a great solution for any situation. They are perfect for both commercial and residential applications, and boast tons of technological features, probably the best being the ability to view both live and recorded feeds all from your favorite mobile device, such as an iPad or iPhone. They offer lots of storage space at a very affordable price, and you don’t have to be a computer whiz to use them.

Let’s start out with their cameras. There are over 10 models to choose from, so you can always find the best one for your situation. They also have some great features that most of the competition does not. Some of these features include backlight compensation and automatic contrast adjustment so the picture never gets distorted due to abnormal lighting conditions. These and many more features allow the WirePath cameras to be tailored to your needs, however specific they may be.

Like their cameras, the WirePath DVRs are a notch above the competition. They offer multiple DVRs ranging from 4-channels to 16-channels (cameras), so you never have to waste money on extra functionality and storage space that you aren’t going to use. They aren’t bulky and will blend in with all the other electronic equipment in your home. Of course, the DVRs also offer a huge slew of great features. One of their key features is their superior compression technology, meaning you can store way more footage and not have to sacrifice quality. They also offer email notifications. You can watch all your camera feeds at the same time using the WirePath mobile app. Of course you’re not going to be sitting around watching your WirePath camera feeds all the time, but you don’t have to. You can set your DVR to send you customized email notifications for whenever motion is detected in certain spots, alarm triggers, and system.