Sound Concepts Decks Out Sarah Palin TV Show Home With ELAN g! Home Automation
Sound Concepts took on the challenge to install the largest ELAN g! home automation system ever installed to a 43,000 square-foot home featured on ‘Amazing America with Sarah Palin.’
Every room in the 43,000-square-foot home has its own video and audio zone. The control system also runs a waterfall, home network and driveway gate 1,000 feet away.
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! home automation system ever installed, according to installer Ryan Heringer of Jonesboro, Ark.-based 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.”
26 Video Zones, 300 Lighting Loads, 24 CCTV Cameras
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 A/V, 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 continues. “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 touchscreens,” he adds.
Tanning Room, Golf Simulator, Barber Shop, Deer Processing Plant
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 says. “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 adds. “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.”
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About the Author
Jason Knott
Jason Knott is Chief Content Officer for Emerald Expositions Connected Brands. Jason has covered low-voltage electronics as an editor since 1990, serving as editor and publisher of Security Sales & Integration. He joined CE Pro in 2000 and serves as Editor-in-Chief of that brand. He served as chairman of the Security Industry Association’s Education Committee from 2000-2004 and sat on the board of that association from 1998-2002. He is also a former board member of the Alarm Industry Research and Educational Foundation. He has been a member of the CEDIA Business Working Group since 2010. Jason graduated from the University of Southern California. Have a suggestion or a topic you want to read more about? Email Jason at [email protected]
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