London’s Finest – Smart Home

The Brief

As part of a complete refurbishment of one of the finer homes in London, our client was looking to achieve a comprehensive smart home solution which incorporated a very high quality cinema room, high quality distributed TV and music systems, smart lighting control, gate entry, heating control and security.

A bespoke lighting design and design of the cinema room interiors and acoustics was also requested and the client was keen to work closely with our team to deliver his dream system.

The Solution

The design of the system was an on going process for many months in conjunction with our client who is very technically minded and also has a great eye for design thus ensuring the audio visual and smart home solutions would be integrated beautifully in to the interior design.

Due to the scale of the property and the requirement for considerable automation, Crestron was selected as the primary control system due to its capability, slick and simple user interface and speed of operation.

Lutron was the only choice for smart lighting control again for its robust performance and stylish easy to use smart keypads.

Bang and Olusfon TV screens and speakers were used heavily in the primary entertaining spaces for the audio visual quality but also their design aesthetic which complemented the interior design perfectly.

The Cinema room was a very high end design with Sony’s flagship 4k projector, Screen Research Anamorphic masking 3m wide 4k screen, Datasat reference level surround processing and Mackintosh reference quality amplification driving 17 B&W 800 series cinema speakers built in to the walls and ceiling of the room thus providing full 9.4.4 specification Atmos configuration.

Integrated Technology

The Crestron Home Automation system controls all of the home smart technology through a slick user interface on in wall touch panels and the clients smart phones and tablets.

The Crestron system allows for control of Lutron lighting and blinds throughout the property, control of the properties BMS system via a BACNET interface which provides seamless control over heating throughout the property and also integrated air conditioning in numerous rooms, CCTV camera selection and browsing, BPT gate entry intercom which is integrated in to Crestron in wall touch panels through the house. These utilises the BPT app on the clients smart phone when he is away from home for audio and video calls from guests.

Crestron also controls the complete audio visual system throughout the house and the cinema room via control of a Wyrestorm video matrix which distributes Sky, Apple TV, CCTV and Blu-ray to all TV screens around the property and the selection of music throughout via a Sonos back end music streaming system and Mackintosh high end amplification.

Design and Installation

The design of all cabling plans, cable schedules and circuit breakdowns for the lighting scheme were produced in house and first fix installation was completed in conjunction with the main electrical contractor.

All cinema room build and acoustic design was completed by Finite Solutions in house from 3D visuals which were signed off by the client to detailed technical build drawings allowing the fantastic site joinery team, heating engineers, cabinet makers, carpet fitters and Fabric wrap team to create the room exactly as conceived in our 3D models.

Second fix installation of all audio-visual and smart technologies took approximately 6 months following the progress of the interior fit out during which time the central AV equipment racks (3x 44U racks overall) where built, cabled and tested in our Fulham office before being fully programme tested with the Crestron control system in advance of deliver and installation on site.

End Result

We are very fortunate to have worked on such an amazing project and with a client who was so involved and interested in the details of the system and integration with the interior design.

The clients love the finished result and are particularly happy with the lighting, security system and the cinema room whose performance is breath-taking.

The Performance of the cinema room and overall smart system is so good in fact that both were shortlisted to the final 3 projects in the best cinema over £ 250,000 and best smart home over £ 360,000 in the Global CEDIA (Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association) awards 2017.