Voice Integrations, including Alexa, Siri, and Xfinity

“The voice integrations function in the Crestron Home OS in the same manner as everyone’s accustomed to,” says Jason Oster, Crestron’s director of product management solutions. “This morning, when I got out of bed, I said, ‘Alexa, turn on the kitchen light,’ so that it’s on by the time I get down to the kitchen — no need to touch a panel or a button while my eyes are still blurry.”

Apple TV® media extender, and Xfinity voice control are both available via the TSR-310 Handheld Remote. “I just press the mic button and say, ‘Find movies that feature, say, a specific movie star,’” says Oster.

“As for Siri, Crestron Home also supports integration with Siri shortcuts, which you can command via voice,” says Oster. “A dealer can create many common Quick Actions, with scenes such as ‘Morning Wake Up’ or ‘Go to Bed’ and simply export those to make them available via Siri.”

And speaking of shortcuts …

Bluetooth Connectivity

“Our daughter went to a concert the other night, and she wanted to share a video from her phone,” says Oster. “Instead of sharing the audio via the little speaker in her smartphone, she was able to route the sound into the kitchen where we were talking for a more immersive experience.” The full spectrum of sound — including bass from the system’s subwoofer — was delivered through Crestron DM NAX® Audio-over-IP technology via an Audio Edge Device, one that we’ve described in a previous post on the Crestron blog:

The DM-NAX-BTIO-1G is a wall plate with Bluetooth® communications and analog inputs and outputs that allows you to easily add Bluetooth audio to any DM NAX® Audio-over-IP, DM NVX® AV-over-IP, Dante® audio network, or AES67 AoIP system. The DM-NAX-BTIO-1G’s flexible form factor can be either put in a wall plate or surface mounted and hidden away — just a single network connection allows you to control and manage the device through the Crestron Home® OS.

“It was a snap for her to send the audio to the right zone,” says Oster. “And behind the scenes, the Crestron Home OS system does all the magic to route that audio to our kitchen.” That’s true for any Bluetooth connected device, adds Galaris: “It’s a fantastic way to really round out the in-home exercise bike experience, for example.”

Quick Actions

The ability to program Quick Actions is one of Oster’s favorite aspects of the Crestron Home OS. “Over time, after you live with your system, you tend to fall into patterns. As night falls, I may turn on the porch lights. I may make sure the garage is closed. I may turn some interior lights a little bit brighter. I can do that easily with the Crestron Home platform with just a few button presses. But when I combine those functions into a Quick Action, I can make it happen just with a single button press. Or even better, if all those things happen at the same time every day, I can simply schedule them to occur automatically.”

Those Quick Actions can be enhanced with the platform’s conditional logic features. Galaris notes, “That action can trigger a check to double-check that the shades are closed, for example.” As we noted on the blog previously, “Conditional sequences introduce the ability to create “if-then, else” statements to the automation process, giving dealers the ability to create complex and nuanced automation scenarios with a defined set of conditions that must be met before an action is triggered.”

Oster advocates living with the system to understand its full potential, and that goes double for dealers. “If you have any downtime, experiment with the system. Once you start experiencing these things and trying them, you can apply these Quick Actions to your next customer's job.

“When you’re solving real-world problems for yourself, it makes it vastly easier to take that knowledge to your next project.”