Homeowner's Backyard Amphitheater Brings Creativity to the Community

Larger and larger outdoor entertainment systems have been on the rise in recent years, and California is naturally one of the most robust markets for serious installations. One homeowner in Southern California has raised the bar for summer cookouts by thinking pretty far outside the box and turning his outdoor living space into a nearly-commercial level amphitheater with a custom-built 220-inch motorized projection screen (18 feet!), 20 speakers, fully automated landscape lighting and a performance stage with 10 inputs that connect to a mixing board inside. If that weren’t enough, there’s also a 15-foot-tall LED-lit sculpture of a question mark intended to indulge meditation in the front yard. Talk about unique!

“I wanted to create a space where the community could come together, where we could hold events and where my son could really get creative with his friends,” the homeowner said. “The last event we held was a children’s charity benefit where we hosted about 200 people. We had bands play on the stage, and we can broadcast through every speaker both inside and outside the house. It’s been really great, and it allows us to have fun without stressing because it’s so easy to use. Everything is basically plug-and-play, and any adjustments are easy to make with the ELAN g! mobile app on my iPhone or iPad. My son has been using it since he was 6 years old.”

The story starts two years ago when the owner had an ELAN g! system installed inside the home to run multi-room audio and five surveillance cameras. Since then he and his integrator AM House have expanded the system to include automated lighting indoors and in the landscape, where there are six zones split between different levels as the property descends down the hillside, plus the entire amphitheater setup, the spa controls and a total of 20 professional-grade Niles outdoor speakers in multiple zones.

“This is one of the coolest backyards I’ve ever seen, let alone designed and installed,” said Justin Brees, owner of electronics integration firm AM House. “Between the custom-made Vutec projection screen, the super-bright 3600 lumen Optima 1080p projector and the Niles speakers and ELAN control, it’s more like a commercial entertainment space than a backyard. Having a stage to hold performances and play them throughout the entire property was a really cool idea and we were able to make it all very simple to operate with the ELAN system.”

While the homeowner has to be mindful of windy conditions when going to watch a movie on the awe-inspiring 18-foot projection screen, the opportunities for enjoying this incredible outdoor space are nearly limitless. From viewing summer movies and fall football games to arranging concerts and throwing parties, it’s a very impressive yet inviting space for the whole community, or for him and his son to enjoy a quiet night.

“All this is possible because of the stellar job that Jose Bermeo, the main builder on this job, did bringing my vision to life,” the owner added. “I knew what I wanted, and I hoped it was possible, but both Jose and Justin really knocked it out of the park with the execution. To me this is part home improvement, part community building and part gift to my son. And for two years it’s been a work-in-progress because I keep finding new things I want the system to do or new subsystems to integrate, so I’m sure this isn’t the last of it. It might be a unique space as far as technology goes, but for me and my son it’s really a way to fully enjoy the beautiful area we live in with our friends and the community.”

The family controls the whole system through the ELAN g! mobile app on iPhones and iPads, which allows them to set all the lighting levels for the six landscape zones, the volume for the eight indoor zones and five outdoor zones, and to control up the spa and projection system. It’s about as simple as it could be, and that was a core requirement for the project. After all, a party space this cool makes you want to have fun, not tinker with settings and knobs all night.

“I imagine this backyard is the envy of the neighborhood,” Brees added, “and rightfully so! As he said, this is an ongoing project, so I’m sure we'll be adding more cool features over time and that’s why it’s such a good thing we used the ELAN system – it’s easy to expand and easy to use. That’s one of the reasons I stick with ELAN for my business, because it allows my clients to start with a small system and grow it over time.”

The brain of the system is an ELAN controller, and audio is run through an ELAN 16-channel amplifier. There are Niles in-ceiling speakers throughout the home and Niles OS outdoor speakers on the patio and in the landscaping.  The room with the mixing board features four studio monitors. The Jandy spa controls connect seamlessly with the ELAN system, allowing for full mobile control of the temperature, on/off and other settings.

How Can You Get Your Installation on Two Cable TV Shows? Install the Largest ELAN g! System Ever!

How do you get your home or technology installation featured on national television? Make it enormous, make it impressive and create an original house that blows people away. Having recently appeared on both Discovery Channel’s “Clash of the Ozarks” and Sportsman Channel’s “Amazing America with Sarah Palin,” this Arkansas residence has many unique and luxurious features, including the largest ELAN g! system ever installed, according to installer Ryan Heringer of Sound Concepts. 

“Working on a project of this magnitude can attract a lot of attention,” Heringer said, “and now that pop culture has caught up with control technology to the point where everyone knows what it is, there are real media opportunities with a project like this. The home itself is truly astounding. The windows, the floors, the walkways, the immense space inside; it’s all pretty incredible to walk through. A 43,000 square foot house tends to create an impression, and when the whole house can be operated from an iPhone through ELAN g!, it’s something people are excited to hear about.”

When Heringer says ‘the whole house’, he really means it. There are a lot of rooms, and there are a lot of TVs and speakers, video zones and audio zones to accompany those rooms. There are nearly 30 TVs from Samsung and Sharp models, three surround systems including a 7.2 home theater with an Epson 3D projector and Dragonfly screen, 26 distinct video zones with 14 available video sources, more than 30 audio zones with 12 available sources including an incredible pool audio system with six Episode subwoofers, more than 300 fully controllable lighting loads, an HAI security system, 24 surveillance cameras, an HAI HVAC system with 12 zones and nine controlled garage doors. Beyond the AV, the ELAN system integrates the driveway gate that is more than 1,000 feet away from the house, the waterfalls and lighting control for the Playboy Mansion-like pool, and commercial-grade Wi-Fi throughout the entire property.

“The system reaches into every nook and cranny of the house, from the gym to the gun storage vault to the landscaping, where there are 25 speakers alone,” Heringer continued. “When your home is this vast it’s necessary to have a way to manage it all, and simply walking around on foot to make sure all the lights and TVs are off just isn’t feasible. With ELAN g! the owners can see everything at a glance on any iPhone, iPad or one the more than 40 ELAN touchscreen interfaces installed throughout the house. We provided a combination of large in-wall touchscreen, small in-wall touchscreens, tabletop touchscreens and ELAN HR2 media remotes to ensure every family member can adjust whichever room they are in to their liking. The remotes are especially important for TV and theater control, as they are the fastest and easiest way to control TVs and the theater thanks to hard buttons combined with a 2.4-inch touchscreen. To facilitate true go-anywhere access inside and outside of the house, each family member also has the ELAN g! mobile app on their smartphone and tablet, which gives full control of the system with the exact same interface that’s on the in-wall touch screens.”

To get an idea just how enormous this house and installation is, you have to think about how many rooms there are. To start there are eight bedrooms, six of which are occupied by the family. Then there is the theater, the great room, the living room, the kitchen, dining room laundry room, barber shop, billiard room, gym, tanning room, poker room, conference room, putting green, golf simulation room, archery range, kids’ shuffleboard room, rock wall room, a deer processing plant, the gun storage vault, a 12 car garage and a separate RV garage, plus the outdoor audio, video, lighting and surveillance. Every room has its own audio zone and most have their own video zone.

“The family has complete control over every room in the home, so each person can listen to or watch what they want, where they want, when they want,” Heringer said. “And then when they call for lights out or go on vacation, all it takes is a few swipes and taps to set the home to ‘Away’ mode and turn everything off. Not only does the system make it easy to manage the large house, it also gives the parents easy access to see what their kids are watching and listening to, as well as to see who is coming and going through the surveillance cameras.”

Because every family member has different tastes, the owners filled the system to the brim with entertainment options including eight DirecTV receivers, a Kaleidescape media server, three Blu-ray players, two ELAN ViaDJ music servers, an iPod dock, a Squeezebox, two Sirius|XM receivers and an AM/FM receiver.

“I’m proud to showcase the power and flexibility of the ELAN g! system with such a tremendous home entertainment and automation system,” Heringer added. “It’s truly incredible that today a single system can control a luxurious home like this and also be a great affordable option for a small apartment.” 

After Fire Ravages Their Home, Couple Upgrades to Whole Home Audio and Video with Niles and ELAN g!

After a fire struck the home of Abe and Elina Rodriguez, sending more than half of it up in smoke, newer local building codes mandated that much of their home be brought up to date during reconstruction. When they hired an architect to help rebuild the home and make the nearly 40 required adjustments, their interest in music and home audio came up. This led to a discussion about a whole home audio system and a recommendation to talk with local integrator Digital Logic Systems, who saw that the Rodriguezes were ready to upgrade to a whole-home AV system. 

“We were very thankful that the security alarm woke us up, but it took us 20 years to get that house how we liked it and we watched most of it go up in flames,” said Abe Rodriguez. “When we set out to rebuild the home we basically had a clean slate to design and create our perfect house. For me, music is a huge part of my life and I had outfitted our home with extensive stereo systems on each floor. When I met Daniel Solly from Digital Logic Systems it was clear that he could deliver the type of whole-home music system I always wanted, and he said the best way to do it was with the ELAN g! system and Niles in-ceiling and outdoor speakers.”

But as these projects usually go, the system didn’t stop with audio. Solly won the bid over two competing integrators because of his superior knowledge and experience, in addition to the affordable nature of the ELAN g! system compared with other home control platforms. After drawing the designs and consulting with the architect, Solly and the Rodriguezes agreed that it was time for them to have a real home theater and integrated video and security throughout the house.

“Daniel gave us a real theater experience right in our home, and he was able to keep it affordable,” Rodriguez said. “When you add that to the whole-home audio and video, it’s a home run. I think DVR is man’s greatest invention, and now we can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, because all the TVs are connected to the system. We have the ELAN TV remotes in four rooms, so it works the same no matter where we are. We also use the ELAN mobile app on our iPhones and iPads to select music and set which rooms it will play in, which comes in especially handy when we are outside." 

The home now has 12 zones of audio with independent volume and on/off controls, including three surround sound systems in the theater, great room and basement family room. The theater and the great room use Niles speakers to deliver superior fidelity audio, which continues throughout the rest of the home in nine of the other ten zones, including the patio and deck. The great room and basement family room each have a wall-mounted 65” Samsung Plasma TV and the theater impresses with its JVC projector and 113” Screen Innovations Black Diamond projection screen.

“We did a lot of comparisons with different speaker brands and different speaker types, because I originally wanted big floor standing speakers,” Rodriguez remarked. “I was told they offer the best sound, but Daniel and my wife convinced me that in-ceiling speakers could not only provide amazing quality sound, but also virtually disappear from sight. This means we don't have to worry about anyone touching them, we don’t have to clean them, there’s no potential for wires to move and we didn’t have to make compromises to position them in each room. Daniel designed the speaker layout very carefully to ensure every spot receives equal volume and dynamic range, and he said the Niles directional speakers helped achieve that.”

Likewise, the couple appreciates that there are no longer cable boxes in every room, and visible wires are a thing of the past. Instead, everything is located in a single equipment rack in the basement, where it is easy to access, maintain and upgrade if necessary.

Beyond consolidated control of audio, video and security that the Rodriguezes implemented, one of the best things about a modern home control system like ELAN g! is remote access that allows the integrator to troubleshoot issues without needing to visit the home. Rodriguez learned the importance of this when there was a small glitch during a party, and Solly was able to log in to the system and fix it quickly. The party didn’t skip a beat, and it was all thanks to a reliable, responsive integrator and a high performance home control system.

By integrating the security system into ELAN g! as well, the Rodriguezes can now view and monitor their home’s security while on-the-go with the ELAN g! mobile app. They know the importance of a security system since that’s what alerted them to their fire. In the future,  the couple may add consolidated control of their home’s heating and air conditioning, among other systems like motorized window shades, surveillance cameras and lawn irrigation.

Core Brands Announces Next-Generation Elan Control Platform with Two New System Controllers

Leading home automation, entertainment and control technology manufacturer, Core Brands, LLC, a Nortek company (NSDQ: NTK) today announced a major upgrade of its award-winning ELAN® Control Platform for residential and commercial markets. This new Linux-based platform delivers better performance, easier installation, broader device compatibility, and greater scalability. The ELAN Control Platform provides a foundation for Core Brands’ highly competitive connected home ecosystem and continues to build its single source solution for customers in its dealer network.

“This is the most significant engineering effort in ELAN’s 25 year history. Our team has invested heavily to re-architect the ELAN Control Platform and make it the preeminent platform for the next-generation connected home,” said Joe Roberts, Vice President of Products and Marketing, Core Brands. “The ELAN Control Platform is a cornerstone in our strategy to delight our dealers and their clients with innovative and integrated products backed by best-in-class service and support.”

This platform provides expansion of ELAN® products and applications in the market, from new entry-level consumer solutions to large customer and commercial installations. It also expands the range of opportunities for Core Brands’ portfolio of smart “Internet of Things” products that can be attached to the platform and be controlled, automated and monitored by ELAN. Attached categories include speakers, multi-room audio, power conditioners, smart-plugs, cameras, access products like gates and garage door openers and more, including from Core Brands’ own market leading brands such as SpeakerCraft®, Niles®, Sunfire®, Panamax®, Furman® and Xantech®, and others.

The new ELAN® gSC2 and gSC10 system controllers are the first products built upon the ELAN v7 Platform.  Boasting new hardware architecture driven by the super-efficient Freescale IMX Processor, these are the fastest and most scalable controllers ELAN has ever produced. The gSC2 and gSC10 controllers are so efficient that they can be powered over Ethernet (PoE) drawing less than 4W and 5W respectively.  These controllers include the intuitive ELAN configurator which makes it easier for the installer, by personalizing the system whereas other control platforms require programming. In addition to these new controllers, Core Brands is developing additional ELAN® products leveraging the Platform, as well as using it to deliver a new level of functionality to upcoming products across the company’s portfolio.

The new ELAN gSC2 and ELAN gSC10 controllers will begin delivery to dealers in July 2014 and will be featured at the upcoming 48-city Core Brands summer tour previewing new products and solutions to channel partners. Tour details will be announced shortly.

NASCAR Legend Mark Martin Takes Control With ELAN g!

After racing stock cars for more than 30 years, NASCAR legend Mark Martin has learned that flawless performance requires a perfect blend of functionality, adaptation, reliability and speed. When he’s racing at 200 miles per hour there is no margin for error or equipment failure. At his home, however, he spent nearly a decade dealing with a frustrating control system that never performed as it should and required constant troubleshooting. It got so bad that he was ready to give up his dream of having a simple home control system that just worked, until he saw the ELAN g! system.
 
“After putting up with a difficult AMX system for 10 years in my home, and I came to a point where I just wanted to simplify and have a satellite receiver next to each TV. I had given up on home automation,” Martin said. “I hired Ryan Heringer of Sound Concepts to remove my AMX system and simplify everything, but when he showed up at the house he said I needed to see the ELAN g! system before giving up. He showed me his iPad with the ELAN g! app, and right away I realized that this was the type of system I had wanted all along. I was still a little hesitant because of my experience, so we started by only integrating the AV, surveillance cameras, garage doors and the driveway gate. Now we’ve added HVAC and will likely continue to add more features as we’ve done at our home in North Carolina.”
 
In addition to being one of NASCAR’s most recognizable names for three decades, Martin is an avid pilot who flies his own small jet airplane between his homes in Arkansas and North Carolina. Once the g! system was up and running at his Arkansas home, Martin realized there was a lot more he could do to make his life simpler. He has a private airplane hangar near each home and frequently travels between the two, so he and his integrator came up with a plan to put ELAN g! systems in the North Carolina home and both hangars.
 
“I already had another AMX system in the Arkansas hangar, and I was anxious to replace it once I saw how much ELAN improved the home control experience,” Martin added. “Obviously the hangars don’t need as much integration, but it’s been incredibly helpful to have the cameras and security accessible on my iPhone, even allowing me to check the weather before I fly so I know immediately if it’s raining or foggy at my destination. For the homes, I now have the ability to turn on the outdoors lights and set the heat or air conditioning while traveling, so it’s exactly how we want it when we arrive. The security integration also gives us a much greater peace of mind, and we know that god forbid anything should happen, we have cameras and a DVR that will record the event and help us resolve it.”
 
Managing multiple properties from a single app is a great feature, but there was one major part of the system that Martin wanted to be sure of before expanding it to all of his properties – it had to be easy to use!
 
“I’m not a tech wizard by any means, but I know how to use an iPhone, so with the ELAN g! app I can operate my shades, HVAC, lighting, door locks, driveway gate and more. That’s one of the reasons we started out small at the Arkansas house. If we thought it was difficult at all we wouldn’t have expanded that system or installed additional systems at the other house and hangars. Honestly, it's so easy to use that I can’t imagine someone not being able to master it quickly.
 
“My wife uses it and likes it, and we both learned the basics right away and then got more familiar with some of the more advanced features like the door lock logs that show who used the doors throughout the day. That’s been a wonderful feature too, because we’ve created unique codes for people who work at the house so they can come and go, and we know who was there and when they came and left. Then if we change providers we can erase those codes, so it’s very convenient and keeps people honest.”
 
While the iPhone and iPad app is great for home control, anyone who’s tried one of those cheap ‘universal remote’ apps for a phone knows that it’s incredibly tedious and annoying to pull out your phone every time you want to change the channel or adjust the volume. That’s why Martin paired each TV with an ELAN HR2 remote – it’s the easiest way to control TVs and music, and it works just like remote controls have worked for thirty years, only better. It has WiFi and IR, so there’s always a solid connection and it doesn’t have to be pointed at the TV to work. Plus it includes a touchscreen that makes it easy to make adjustments to lights, heat, shades and more if users need to.
 
“Another great thing is that we don’t have equipment by the TVs anymore. There’s no cable box, no Blu-ray player, no wires anywhere in sight. Instead, everything is tucked away in a rack in a storage room. Ryan set it up to be very user friendly, and if any of the equipment needs to be reset, which happens with all technologies, all I have to do is hit a power button on top of the rack. He even made separate power buttons for each component and labeled them so I can troubleshoot minor issues myself. That’s one thing I learned for sure, that having the right installer can make all the difference. Sound Concepts has done a terrific job on every installation and I have been recommending the company to my friends. The only complaint I have about the system is that it didn’t exist 10 years ago!”