iPad Home Automation Solution - Meet the New Crestron iPanel !
It's no secret the Apple iPad is a red hot product. Time will tell, but the iPad may just be revolutionary enough to displace a lot of products already on the market, such as bulkier laptops, e-book readers, and for the home automation industry...larger wireless home automation touch panels.
Instead of burying their head in the sand and hoping the iPad doesn't displace their existing wireless touch panel sales, Crestron is embracing the iPad in a big way with their new "iPanel" product. The information that follows (and the photo) comes courtesy of Julie Jacobson of CEPro magazine...it is copied here:
"If only the iPad had hard buttons, it could be a great home controller. Crestron delivers with the 13-button iPanel, which snaps over the iPad and communicates via the multipin connector.
Multitasking and hard buttons. When it comes to using the iPad as a home controller, those are the two big missing pieces.
Now Crestron is tackling the issue of hard buttons with the new iPanel, which snaps over the face of an iPad like a clam shell.
A total of 13 buttons grace the left and right sides of the iPanel:
- Volume Up & Down
- Mute
- Lights
- Home
- Guide
- Info
- Exit
- Left, Right, Up, Down, Select
The buttons look like the ones on Crestron's TPS-6X wireless touchpanel, and they function similarly.
As for details about the iPanel, we don't have many.
We know that power and communications occur through the the iPad's multipin connector. The buttons tap into the iPad's WiFi capabilities, communicating with a Crestron controller just like the TPS-6X or any other WiFi-enabled Crestron touchpanel.
But the screen does not have to be docked for the hard buttons to work. That's because the case itself contains a multipin connector. When you dock the unit, you are basically stacking connectors.
Now for the biggest questions about the iPanel.
Can you engrave the buttons? “We need to finalize, but we should be able to.”
Can the hard buttons be used for instant access to the Crestron app? “We are still working through the Apple OS. More details soon.”
We hear that Crestron is targeting a price point of less than $500, including the dock. We have also heard that the next generation of the dock will offer streaming media, although it's unclear what that means."
Back to DSI's comments: Thanks Julie Jacobson for breaking this news! Next week is the big show for the custom electronics installation industry, the annual CEDIA Expo show. More details about the iPanel should surface then, as well as many new cool product launches, so stay tuned here for updates to this post and new product information.
To date, the Crestron iPanel clam shell is the most ingenious accessory we've seen to use an iPad for home automation, and we look forward to implementing this solution. The article above mentions a very real iPad "catch" that may cause issues during use...the lack of multi-tasking. This issue may be solved eventually, but what needs to be considered now is what happens when you need quick access to your 'volume' or 'mute' functions when you may be in another application (surfing the web, etc.). As it stands today, you can't just hit 'mute' and be done with it...instead you would have to exit the app you are in, launch the home control app, and then press 'mute'! Yikes...that could be a problem!
DSI Entertainment Systems offers four product solutions for home automation control: Crestron, AMX, Control 4, and Savant. All four of these excellent companies currently have iPad solutions. To find out which of these four home control solutions fits your needs, give DSI a call at 866-692-8489 or visit the Los Angeles showroom to use a home automation system firsthand.