Version three of the Crestron Home OS has gone through many, many updates since its introduction roughly four years ago. In fact, that version of the platform saw nearly two dozen of those updates — and all the while, the Crestron team was working on a new version of the software. There’s a point, after all, in the development of any operating system when incremental updates give way to a bigger “jump” in a system’s evolution. In the case of Crestron Home OS 4, that step was driven by two major developments:
- A platform-wide improvement to the look, feel, and overall experience that the UI presents to the user, and,
- A complete overhaul of the digital lighting portion of the platform.
The Details in the Update
Some of the experiential changes in this version of the Crestron Home platform include:
- The room list that allows homeowners to control various parts of their residence — or monitor usage and other elements of their systems — has been completely refined and updated. Now, “compact” views allow the user to see multiple rooms at once, and a quick toggle function can switch the view from a “grid” to a “list” layout.
- Touch screens in the Crestron Home platform can now provide whole-home paging to make announcements to the entire household or a select group of rooms with one touch.
- The end-user schedule feature allows homeowners to schedule events and automate tasks without a call to the dealer. This is the most granular system customization that has ever been made available to the end user.
- Xfinity voice control has also been added to the suite of VUI products available in the Crestron Home platform, and control via the Apple Siri voice recognition software has been dramatically improved, too, with the addition of Apple Shortcuts.
In fact, this user experience is now so refined that a quick demo virtually sells the system to a prospect — Crestron Home OS 4 pushes the “wow factor” to new heights.
When it comes to lighting control, this part of the update almost functions as a “platform within a platform” — it’s that advanced. It allows access to both the front- and back-end experience of a lighting system, regardless of the digital protocol used in the fixture type, giving you the power to blend a broad range of luminaires. One can now mix and match Crestron tunable white or color lighting using DMX-C, DALI 2 lighting, Philips Hue smart lighting, and many more — regardless of the protocol.
As with previous updates to the Crestron Home platform, this update will occur automatically at no charge to the clients with smart homes running the Crestron Home OS.
Because Crestron Home OS 4 was built with both dealer and client in mind, improving the user experience extends to the installation — an integrator can deploy and customize this version more rapidly than ever before, making for quicker “ready-to-use-results” to keep the customer happy.
