Crestron Electronics, Inc.

Okay, so the main difference is the home automation market or building automation market in the U.S., goes yes or yes.

I mean, it's not an option, okay? So your solution is compared to this solution from this manufacturer, Crestron, Control4, or Lutron, or whatever you want to say.

So this is your bottom line.

In Europe, it's different.

One of the things those teams have to find room for is the lighting panel.

This week Crestron introduced an 8-channel universal switch and a 4-channel universal dimmer.

Crestron says the new modules can cut enclosure requirements in half compared with the older devices they replace.

Installers can also commission them from the front panel without a laptop.

If you're working on a renovation with limited utility space, a smaller enclosure can change where centralized lighting is practical.

So what platforms do you work with? Do you just, like, work with, what is it, Samson SmartThings or HomeKit or what do you guys work with?

So our main two are Crestron and Savant.

Oh, okay.

Wow.

So and the irony is it's the same answer to how do you continue to have college in an era of AI when it can write all your things for you, which is experiential project based learning and assessment learning.

So here's a great example, not to call down the thunder, but to get an Avixa CTS, you go and you sit for a test and you do math and you answer the fill in the right bubbles and you get it or not based upon what you had in your head on that day to become a Crestron certified programmer.

you have to turn in a program that is complicated and that has multiple dependencies.

And somebody doesn't just pull it up and look at the code you wrote.

You need that human interaction.

You need that real world.

You need to be able to push a Crestron program to a thing.

press the buttons on the touch panel, like, right? Like AI can't do that.

Now, again, I find that quite interesting.

I certainly have got more people asking me to integrate a voice assistant in with their control system, whether that be Control 4 or Crestron, Was that sort of result similar in America? I think although it's a buzzword, AI, and everybody and the shareholders at massive firms love AI, it does seem to be encroaching into more and more people's lives and how it can help them.

And I suppose the disability market, along with voice assistants and AI, is one big plus for the smart home where we can help disability, we can help people that maybe not turn on light switches or answer the door easily by the use of voice assistants and AI.

Was the result in America pretty similar to the UK? Because I'm personally going to be quite interested to see the Indian report and how things like AI, how they are reflected in India compared to what are two very Western countries.

Well, before I got into post or when I was still in college learning post, one of my first tech jobs was automation.

You may remember a company called AMX and they had something called Pangea, which they rebranded and that and things like Crestron and then Q-SYS.

And it's ways of using technology to automate repetitive tasks.

And normally it's used in enterprise and things like that.

They actually like, so Savant, uh, you know, I went to this trade show Cedia.

It's like one of those, uh, I think there's this world of, uh, ultra wealthy people in America that all uses like either Crestron or Savant or, or, uh, I forget what the other names were, but anyways, there's all these pro installers that use these things.

So Savant buying out GE lighting was really for that pro market, I believe.

So I think a lot of their stuff, it was like the pro market didn't really embrace matter.

The parts have to be certified, and Microsoft publishes the list of certified systems and peripherals.

The names you'll see most often are Logitech, Poly, Yelling, Crestron, Neat, Lenovo, and Beamp.

Buying a certified bundle from one of those vendors is the fast path, because they've already done the compatibility work.

Assembling your own mix of parts is possible, but then, the job of proving it all works together lands on you.