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CIS - Charlotte, NC's Source For Auton Automation Solutions!

When you’re not watching TV, the Dream Machine can hide it under your bed at the press of a button.

Sometimes you just don’t have the right wall for mounting a TV. And sometimes you just want to keep the views out of your bedroom window intact, whether they’re looking out on a beach, a city skyline or mountainside.

Auton may have the designer-friendly solution for your viewing needs. Keep your vistas pristine, and keep your TV out of the way when you don’t want to watch it—the company’s Dream Machine under-bed TV lift does the manual labor for you.

We see plenty of TV hide-away solutions that stow a set within the ceiling or bed footboard. The Dream Machine utilizes today’s super-thin TVs to fold them up and tuck them under the bed (or other place you’re looking to save space).

With the press of its wireless remote, the lift will quietly raise your TV out and up from under the bed and into a favored preset viewing height. From there it’s not only viewable from the bed, but anywhere else in the room because it can swivel 180 degrees in either direction. Then it’ll fold back up and under again to its original position with another click.

The Dream Machine can hold up to 120 pounds, more than enough for today’s light-weight flat panels, and it slides on polyurethane wheels under the bed so no worries about installation hassles or floor scratching.

Check with your local Auton dealer or custom electronics pro for more.

by Arlen Schweiger

http://www.electronichouse.com/article/auton_under-bed_tv_lift_a_dreamy_solution/

Custom Installation Services, LLC – Charlotte and Asheville NC’s Source For Auton Automation Products!

Examples of how cookie-cutter lighting control solutions can’t cut it.

The lighting requirements of every homeowner are unique.

Cookie-cutter lighting control solutions just don’t cut it anymore.

We collected some of our favorite lighting control installs, including a Super Bowl MVP, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and quirky product inventor.

So whether you’re adding lighting control yourself or with the help of a CE pro, here are a few ideas to get your brain pumping.

scenes_setting_control Scenes Setting Control
A little lighting control goes a long way toward simplifying life in this 17,000-square foot home. The hallway lighting brightens gradually to preset intensity levels at the touch of a button tied into the Crestron automation system.

An “Entertain” scene adjusts the brightness levels of select lights to accentuate the home’s unique architectural features, while also opening the motorized draperies to provide a view of the mountains from the floor-to-ceiling windows. A “Good Morning” scene switches on fixtures in certain rooms.

A “Goodbye” scene sweeps through the house to ensure that every light is turned off during the owners’ absence. “Goodnight With Guests” switches off every light except for the fixtures in the guest suites and hallways.

controlling_an_island Controlling an Island
Segway inventor Dean Kamen owns a lighthouse home on the North Dumplings Island. A couple of years ago, the U.S. government cut the undersea cable that powered the lighthouse, forcing Kamen to rely on solar panels to power his home.

Philips Color Kinetics, makers of LED, helped Kamen with his goal “to design and build the world’s neatest home lighting system.” An LED Light System Manager from Philips now controls the island’s color LEDs and can modulate each bulb to control brightness, generate different colors from the red, green and blue LEDs.

bright_lights_of_hollywood Bright Lights of Hollywood
It took more than just pretty lighting effects for this Hollywood Hills home to win Electronic House’s Home of the Year. A Vantage lighting system, controlled by Crestron automation, includes various scenes that light up or accent specific areas of this 7,000-square-foot residence. It provides both practical and architectural enhancements.

controlling_led Controlling LED
This was an enormous LED retrofit – to the tune of about $60,000 worth of energy-saving improvements.

“Everything about the project was big,” says Mark McGuinness of Chesley Electric in Park City, Utah, of this 16,500-square-foot home that recently won Lutron’s Excellence Award for Best Green Project.

A big portion of the savings came from Chesley replacing all the system’s halogen lighting, inside and out, with LEDs from LED Power. Adding LED bulbs in a dimmable lighting control system is not an easy trick.

The Lutron HomeWorks system is able to dim the 300 or so MR16 lights, but not the recessed PAR lamps. So Chesley programmed the lighting control system to shut off the PAR lamps during certain dimmable scenes. For example, in the kitchen, when a SOFT scene button is pressed, the MR16s over the cabinets dim, and the six receding PAR lamps shut off.

light_my_way Light My Way
It’s not always easy to navigate a 12,000-square-foot home, so Shelton, Conn.-based Advanced Home Audio provides some trails.

A connection between a Vantage lighting control system and AMX home control system allows the family to brighten, dim and turn on and off more than 200 interior and exterior lights.

Pathways, which illuminate a route between rooms, can also be engaged from a touchpanel. The system maps out a course to the destination automatically, based on where the user is. For example, if the user activates the “Movie” path from the kitchen touchpanel, lights leading from the kitchen to the home theater switch on.

no_lighting_control_blues No Lighting Control Blues
When you’re an 84-year-old blues legend who still loves performing enough to tour the country, you deserve nice accommodations.

So it’s good that B.B. King’s $1.4 million, 45-foot luxury motor coach with more than $200,000 worth of electronics includes some solid lighting control. It uses a proprietary 12-relay lighting control system that was designed by Digital Home Lifestyles, which controls the 64 zones of lighting.

quarterback_approved_contro Quarterback-Approved Control
Total home control was Eli Manning ‘s overwhelming priority when the Mannings gutted and renovated their 3,000-square-foot condo. Eli and his wife wanted one-touch control of audio, video, motorized shades and lights. The couple worked with Audio Video Crafts, using both Lutron and Crestron components to design the system.

by Tom LeBlanc

http://www.electronichouse.com/article/7_cool_lighting_control_ideas/

Custom Installation Services, LLC – Home Theater, Audio and Video Services, Home Automation in North Carolina and South Carolina