Check out this BCG Concepts collaboration with Brilliant and Thomas James Homes on integrating their wall stations into new construction home builds. This is a great product for Builders to offer smart home features at an entry level price point to their customers. 

This product works with Sonos, Ring, Amazon Alexa and more. 

When you decide to embrace smart home automation, you want more than half-baked DIY or over-the-counter products. Your lifestyle and status demand premier products that treat your home as a personalized ecosystem, offering innovative devices and intuitive interfaces.
Whether you are looking to improve your health and wellbeing or enhance the way you enjoy music and movies, a Control4 system provides solutions that fit how you live, work, and play. For nearly twenty years, the company has been at the forefront of tunable lighting, climate control, and entertainment, furnishing you with ease, comfort, and the luxury of convenience.
Are you intrigued by the possibilities for your Los Angeles, CA area home? Keep reading for more!

Any smart home interface must be intuitive for your experience to be a positive one. Navigating the graphical user interface should be instinctual, encouraging further use and continued exploration of its features and functions.
Control4’s highly praised release of OS 3 enables fluid menus, smoother gesture responses, as well as better placement of contextual tools to make everything a naturally relaxing experience. The screens are easier to read with more prominent buttons and increased touch areas, allowing you access to the actions you desire with fewer taps.
While the glossy ease of touch screens offer a sensual presentation, they can often be more distracting than helpful. For example, when you want to raise the volume or lower the shades, you have to look away from the show or your task at hand. However, the Wi-Fi-connected Neeo handheld remote by Control4 offers just the right mix of an interactive screen and tactile buttons. Choose the action you want without having to look down.

Voice control of your home was the long dream of science fiction writers and enthusiastic futurists. Bell Labs produced the first working examples, demonstrating its “Audrey” in 1952 and “ShoeBox” unit at the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Since then, we’ve come a long way, with interactive speakers becoming nearly ubiquitous.
Control4 embraced voice control early on, and in 2021, it entered an exclusive partnership with Josh.ai, the premier voice interface. Rather than make you utter awkward phrases or technobabble, the Josh.ai system allows you to speak with your natural voice and sentences. Now, you can raise the kitchen lights without taking your hands out of the dough or initiate a sequence of events or scenes to occur by simply saying ‘Good Morning.’

A smart home furnishes you with the convenience and luxury of a house that not only fits but responds to your lifestyle. Control4 makes it easier to manage your whole home. Are you ready to make your home more intuitive? Call us at (213) 232-4702 or fill out our contact form to start the conversation!

​Newly completed home in Toluca Lake, CA. The homeowner came to us just before closing escrow on a new home and wanted to create a total smart home, complete with a cinematic theater room. ​

The home now features Control4 total home automation, with 10" in-wall touch panels and a single streamlined interface to control everything from the Lutron smart lighting system, the front door intercom, garage doors, drive and pedestrian gates, surveillance cameras, TV and audio systems in each room, even the pool and spa. 

Martin Logan Electrostat tower speakers frame the Family Room fireplace providing incredible sound for both music and audio from the Sony Master Series OLED TV. A whole-home video distribution system discretely organizes video sources in the equipment closet (4K Apple TVs, Blu-ray Player, Cable/Satellite TV boxes) to transmit to screens throughout the house.

For an even more immersive at-home movie night, this house also features a media room theater, with a Sonance Reference in-wall surround sound system and sound-cushioning acoustic panels, letting you get lost in the movie. A Sony 4K UHD video projector and acoustically transparent ultra high definition screen make sure no frame and no detail is missed. Smart lighting helps set the perfect atmosphere, sleek and comfortable theater seating from CinemaTech has room for everyone, and a Control4 touch panel controls everything with ease.

Newly completed home in Brentwood from Thomas James Homes. Control4 system featuring central panel lighting with single keypads in each room, eliminating the need to have large banks of light switches. 10" touch panel from Control4 interfaces with the front door intercom providing 2 way audio communication with video from the front gate. Speakers throughout the house from Definitive Technology. 

The theater features a JVC Pro projector providing 4k Ultra HD to a 133" acoustically transparent screen. This theater also features speakers from Definitive Technology and a SuperCube subwoofer. 

Samsung UHD displays are installed in the master bedroom and the great room. The great has 5 speakers in the ceiling from Definitive Technology and powered by a Denon audio video receiver. There is an 8 camera system from Luma for exterior cameras to secure the perimeter. 

Kermit may have sung of the hardships of being green, but here at BCG we think it’s easy, and totally worth it. Especially in Los Angeles, you already recycle, use re-usable grocery bags, and drive an Earth-friendly vehicle, why shouldn’t your house be part of the environmental fun too? With all the advances in today’s technology, there are easy things you can do throughout your home that Mother Nature would be proud of, and actually make your life better. Making your home a “Smart Home” is just the thing to modernize your space and make everything around the house a   little more convenient, all the while saving you money and doing your part to protect our planet. 

The quickest way to get your home on the “smart” track? Lighting Control. Automated lighting is an essential element of any smart home. It’s also the easiest way to cut down your electricity bill and save some energy. Preset dimmers, motorized shades, and scheduled automation can help ensure that lights aren’t left on unnecessarily and your entire home can take advantage of natural light. Especially here in Southern California, we should take advantage of all that sunshine!

Taking the first step toward total lighting control will give you instant gratification on your electric bill,  as well as making your home modern and beautiful. We told you it’s easy being green! 

Sonos is the easiest way to have access to all of your music and play it through-out your home. Most of our music collections these days consist of music on a hard-drive, iTunes or a cloud based streaming service like Spotify, MOG and others. 

Sonos brings all of this together on an easy to navigate app on your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Android. There is also a very robust computer interface which is where you start your Sonos configuration.

Another great feature is that you enter your zip code and the Sonos will find your local radio stations (through the internet) and provide a high-fidelity stream - no more worrying about large bulky FM antennas and poor reception.

So what do you need?

1 - First you will need to figure out how many areas you want music. You will either need a set of speakers to be installed or you can use the Sonos Play3 or Play5 which are completely integrated wireless Sonos solutions that can be moved from room to room. If you install speakers, you will need either a Sonos Connect or Connect Amp. The Connect is for areas that already have an amplifier like your surround sound system whereas the Connect Amp is for a set of speakers that needs power amplification. 

2- Second, you will need to determine if you want all zones to play the same thing or if you want to be able to control them separetely. For all zones playing the same thing, all you need is a multichannel amplifier, some speakers and a single Sonos Connect. This will feed the single Sonos feed into the amp which will play that single feed to all the speakers. If you want separate zone control, you will need to buy a Sonos Connect Amp for each set of speakers. Then you can turn on/off and control volume and song selection individually for each zone (you still have the ability in this setup to have all zones play the same thing if you are entertaining). 

How much does this all cost?

- A starter system consists of a Sonos Connect ($349) plus a couple speakers, some wire and a little labor to put it all together will run you between $900 - $1,400 per zone depending on your speakers selection. We recommend speakers from Definitive Technology.  

- The Play3 ($299) and Play5 ($399) are easy ways to get started with Sonos without any installation of speakers into your walls and these boxes can be easily moved around the house where music is needed.

We LOVE this system. Great streaming audio quality, very affordable compared to other distributed audio systems and the best selection of content around. 

The phrases "smart home," "home automation," and "integrated home" get thrown around quite a bit and it can be confusing to figure out what exactly you need amidst all the noise. 

There are many players getting into the smart home market including ADT, Verizon, AT&T and more. Systems are becoming more affordable and scalable allowing home owners to get started small and build their systems over time.

Here are 5 tips to finding the right installation for you. 

5-10 years ago, there were fewer players in the market and touch screen control was only offered through their proprietary devices. Take Crestron Electronics for example - They are the leader in automation for residences and businesses and pioneered many of the technologies in the industry. Their touch panels made it cost prohibitive to many consumers at $2,000-$3,000 a piece to provide a nice graphical user interface. Now you can have your iPad, iPhone, Andriod or computer as your touch panel and save a significant cost on those devices.

Control4 offers a site license for the home as part of their control systems that is a one time fee of $499. This allows the home owner to sync unlimited mobile devices to their system. 

There are some advantages in having branded touch panels and interface devices. Typically, the iPhone and iPad are slower to access quick functions like lights, volume and channel surfing

Most of the systems allow you to do this to some extent but if you want your system to be scalable, pick a system like Crestron or Control4 that allows you to add wireless dimmers, switches, thermostats, and more. This also allows you to reduce the hardware in the system without having to make a physical wiring connection from each device to the processor. A few years ago, every single device would have to be hard-wired to the processor requiring additional wiring, labor, power supplies and more.

The Zigbee wireless protocol is very effective in that it creates a mesh network. The original Lutron Radio Ra lighting was point to point, meaning the single wireless transmitter sent out a signal and if one of your twenty dimmers didn't receive it (perhaps it was too far away from the transmitter) the signal would not get processed. The newer systems use Zigbee and other protocols to create a mesh network so each device (dimmer, switch, etc) acts as a repeater for another device. So if you have twenty dimmers you have essentially twenty different transmitters and receivers in the system.

The new Lutron Radio Ra 2 is now a mesh network and a great improvement over previous versions.

For most users, a good integrated home allows total control for audio and video as well - not just environmental features like lights, temperature, shades, pool and spa. Some automation companies make it easier than others to access your media. Most offer a nice interface to access FM/AM and satellite radio as well as an iPod dock. 

Having access to Sonos, Pandora, iTunes libraries, Internet Radio and Movies is a little trickier. The easiest and most cost effective way to have total control of your music if definitely the Sonos system. The issue is that Sonos is not an automation company so it is on an island in terms of not being directly integrated with our home control platform. The only company that offers integration into the home automation system of Sonos is Control4. Extra Vegetables (a third party Control4 driver company) has created a driver to allow total control for the Sonos audio system right from the Control4 interface.

One of the benefits about having an integrated house or office is that you can check on it when you are away. These functions range from setting vacation modes for your lights, drapes and sprinklers to give the appearance that you are home. Also checking on your cameras when you alarm goes off. Being able to remotely see who is at your front door and buzz people in for package deliveries and more.

CCTV Surveillance
Control4 4Sight
Crestron Mobile Pro G

There are many home automation companies that pop up here and there and ultimately get bought out by their competitors or go bankrupt. This means no support, no dealer network, and no upgrades for the homeowner that just spent $10,000 - $50,000 on a system. A few years back we walked into a client's home who had a Phast system. Phast was supposed to be the game changing new kid on the block 15 years ago and they were in business for a couple years before being bought by AMX (a larger competitor). AMX killed the line and left customers with these expensive systems that were essentially paperweights. 

Companies like Crestron, Lutron, AMX, URC, RTI, HAI, Control4 and Savant have been around long enough that they are good bets to invest in a system - you can also rest assured that you have a strong dealer network with these brands to service, upgrade and repair elements of you system.