As an entrepreneur who started several companies in the automation industry, Eric Smith is passionate about home control. In his most recent venture as co-founder and chief technology officer of Control 4, he's taken on his biggest challenge so far, setting the course for a company that aims to bring home automation to the masses. He believes that, once people have experienced the benefits of a home-control system, they'll realize it's just like a TiVo or microwave — they can't live without it. Jamie Sorcher talked to Eric about staying ahead of the curve in a constantly changing industry.
You've already been involved with a number of control-system companies, including Phast. Why start Control 4?
A couple of reasons. First is the personal passion. We didn't want to sell Phast when we did. We actually tried to buy all the rights, but in the end we were bought out and ended up leaving. I wanted to get back into the business because I love automation. But if it had meant staying in that nichey high-end market, it wouldn't have been interesting enough to be worth doing. The market at the time we started Control 4 was limited by two major factors — you could only do new houses or major retrofits, and only rich people could afford the system. So we thought if we could come up with an affordable, retrofit-able system, all of sudden it wouldn't be just for rich people — it could be for everyone; it could be for the whole world.
How are you able to do that?
We actually wanted to do standards-based Ethernet wireless controls when we did Phast. But back in 1995, a spread-spectrum radio cost $120 and an Ethernet chip cost $75. It was very expensive. That changed dramatically when radios that do stress-spectrum sequencing became less expensive. The cost of the enabling components came down to more like the $2 or $3 range. Processor horsepower has gotten cheaper, too. To make a wireless network reliable in a home, you need some kind of mesh-networking technology where the devices in the network help each other. The best example would be of a light switch that's all the way on the other end of your house from the lighting controller. In an older wireless system, the two components would have no way to communicate with each other. With mesh technology, the switch can hop and ask one of its neighbors to help send packets onto the controller. So a couple of things have happened. Technology has been enhanced to enable the retrofit market. And we focus heavily on making it less expensive. Some of our competitors build everything — they design and do it all right in New Jersey. I'm all for "Made in America," but in the end you're not going to get to a price the average consumer can afford if you go that route.
Tell me about your newest product, the HC-1000 home controller.
We're not after the really high-end homes. We're after the average family living in a 2,000- to 5,000-square-foot house without automation. But a lot of our dealers like our products and our prices so much that they started taking us into high-end homes anyway. (In the end, everyone likes to save money — even rich people.) The dealers didn't want to have to carry Control 4 products for lower-end systems and carry somebody else's products for high-end installs because that meant having to train their salespeople on two different lines. So we created the HC-1000 — which, at $3,000, is an expensive component — to address the high-end market.
Are wireless systems the future for home automation?
Our lighting and temperature controls and relay motorized blinds are all wireless. We don't even offer wired versions, because the bit rate and reliability are so good. Now, when we get to streaming audio and video, we've found that we need to use Wi-Fi because Zigbee — which is another standard we use — is too slow. But Wi-Fi systems tend to get noisier and noisier. So I guess the answer is that I believe everything will go wireless someday, but people will continue to use a wire connection for some systems whenever possible.
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| Control 4's new top-of-the-line home controller, the HC-1000 ($3,000), is designed to handle unusually complex multiroom and whole-house installations — even condos and apartment buildings. It integrates not only Control 4 audio, video, lighting, and climate products, but gear from many other manufacturers as well. |
The problem with wireless is that you have only one spectrum — the air. You can put signals on the air, but you can only put one signal there. And if anyone else wants to be on that same air in that same place, you've got to share it. With a wire, you have dedicated bandwidth per connection. Also, there are still some challenges. Wireless HD video isn't really viable right now. But as time goes on, you'll see completely wireless home automation with every feature — including audio and video. With moving audio and video around the house, though, I believe a wire will still be the preferred embodiment for some time.
Can we expect to see considerably less expensive home-automation systems in the future?
To some extent, yes. There will be products that do some level of automation on their own for consumers, but those will be for the same kinds of guys who go to Home Depot and buy their own light switches and install them. When you take your lighting system, heating system, security system, and A/V stuff, and make them all work together, the odds you're going to want to do that yourself are small. Most people just don't do their own plumbing or lighting. They don't even want to change a garbage disposal. I think adding automation and integrating all the systems will still be done professionally, but it will be inexpensive.
Where do you see Control 4 going over the next five years?
We plan to continue to grow rapidly. We already believe we're the leader in automation, but we really hope to become not just the control system that most people use, but the platform for making all the systems in the home talk to each other.
I don't have home automation. Does it really make your life that much easier?
I love that when I shut the garage door and leave the house, the system knows which way I'm going, based on the sensor, and will shut off all the lights and the A/V system. I love having a button by the bed that I can push at night to makes sure all the doors are shut — and if one isn't, it tells me. I love that when I leave my 14-year-old son watching my other kids, I can put my house in babysitter mode and if any exterior door in the house opens while I'm gone, I get an e-mail. I can then call my son and say, "Hey, someone opened the back door," since I have a 2 year old who I don't want out in the street. I love that the lights turn off automatically in my kids' bedrooms when it's bedtime. I've got a bunch of DVDs, but my little kids used to scratch them. Now the discs are in a changer in the basement that no one can get to, but anyone can access any movie from any TV. If I've been away on vacation. I can turn my air conditioning back on in my house on my way home from the airport. For a bachelor, it might be that when he walks in the door, one button is for when he's home alone — it automatically pops on ESPN and turns on the lights — and the other button might set a romantic mood. It's a million little things like that, and for each person it might be something different. But every person I've met who has used automation can't imagine not having it.
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