In this week’s installment of “Home of the Future,” a six-part video series covering a prefab home project built to incorporate cutting-edge technology and sustainability, Curbed and The Verge examine the Austin, Texas project’s “super computer brain”, which controls the entire smart technology suite.
The central console was assembled and designed by Austin-based Smarter Homes, which specializes in custom home automation systems. It incorporates two Sonos Connects, which provide streaming audio for both indoor and outdoor stereos, a Lutron hub that controls the home’s smart lighting, a Wi-Fi modem, a Denon surround-sound receiver, and an RTI processor, which unifies the disparate smart home devices into one app-based command interface.
But the magic of a fully tricked-out smart home really manifests itself when you set up automated shortcuts, which are function sequences that use a combination of devices. So activating a “welcome home” shortcut might pull up Netflix, turn on some lights and background music, and set the temperature to a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit right when you walk through the door. This idea of creating “recipes” for smart home functions is also possible in more DIY-based approaches to home tech.
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