Smart Home Automation made simple for San Francisco Bay Area Residents. Step-by-step planning guide for budgeting, design, controls, brand choices, and features for your project. Our guide and questioner is designed to provide answers and solutions regardless of your project size or scope.

Smart Home Automation
Planning & Budgeting Guide 2024

Smart Home Automation Basics for Bay Area Residents

San Francisco Bay Area residents, Smart home automation platforms such as Savant, Crestron, and Control4, along with DIY home automation systems like Apple Homekit, Google Home, Lutron, Samsung Smart things, Vera, and Amazon Alexa appliances, switches, and gadgets to a central hub/smart bridge, or cloud based controller, enabling you to control those devices in secure and convenient ways. Command groups of lights to turn on or off, change color, or lock/unlock your entry doors and garage doors, receive alerts when a leak springs, voice control your music selections or entertainment scenes with an Amazon Alexa enabled device or Google Home, see who's at the front door with a Ring, Arlo, or Nest video doorbell, stream and distribute music with Sonos systems, program your smart thermostat to work with your heating and AC when the room gets hot, control your lighting and automated shades with Lutron Caseta dimmers and switches, or Lutron HomeWorks or Radio Ra3 premium lighting platforms, or or manage the energy usage of your home with intelligent back up battery and Solar systems. We can also assist you in designing your lighting system with Lutron's Ketra Color changing lighting applications. Well planned smart home automation devices make your home more comfortable, more convenient, and more secure than ever. Please complete the fields below and send us your information along with details about your automation preferences and we'll help you plan your Smart Home project.

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Frequently Asked Questions

I’m remodeling my home, where should I start?

When remodeling, there are many ideas to consider. From wiring to home automation to security, there’s plenty to think about. We’ve written a few tips on getting started with your new remodeling project.

How does smart home automation work?

With smart home technology, it's possible to automate nearly anything. All you need are a few devices to power your home, and an app on your smart home, or some keypads on your wall. Whether you'd like to automate a few voice commands to raise your shades, or turn on and off a few smart lightbulbs, there's plenty of simple ideas that can be automated to the sound of your voice. We've written quite a few ideas for automating your smart home with products you can purchase to get started, and some smart home ideas to start off the new year.

I want to automate my entire home, where do I begin?

When it comes to automating your entire home, it's best to get started when you're in the planning stages for a new construction or remodel. However, it's always possible to add home automation systems later. Systems such as Control4 offer a lot in terms of automating your lights, shades, remotes, and more. Savant on the other hand works with many other brands and styles of home automation such as Lutron shades, Sonos music surround sound systems, and many more. When you're trying to get your smart home automation ideas started, we recommend visiting our blog and some of our completed projects.

I'd love a surround sound music system, where do I begin?

Surround sound systems come in all shapes in sizes, with many different feature sets. Thankfully, this allows your new smart home the best in sound utilization. Some people would like to do something simple that is plug-and-play such as a Sonos music system, which can be controlled on an app independent of your other smart home technology. If you have a Savant smart home system, your Sonos will work on there as well. Other people love to use more traditional speaker systems for that whole home Dolby 5.1, 7.2.1, or 9.2.1 surround sound, which is entirely possible to automate and install in your new smart home.

How do I automate my shades and lighting?

If your home has smart home lighting and shade technology, you're in luck. It's easy to use a smart home system to control your shades with the flick of an app, or the press of a Lutron keypad. If your home has a Savant system powering home automation, you can tie everything together, creating special scene modes that make it possible to turn your lights and shades on and off at a certain time of day, and even more. There's limitless possibilities with your smart home technology solutions, which we've discussed before in this article about smart shades. Submit your information to get more ideas about smart shade solutions.