Lighting, audio and cameras that behave like one system.

The problem with most smart homes

A house acquires automation in layers. Lighting control goes in during the build. Sonos arrives with the furniture. Cameras get added after a break-in three doors down. A thermostat is replaced. Each layer works on its own and none of them know about each other, so the house ends up with five apps and no single way to turn everything off when you leave.

Our first job is usually not installation, it is reconciliation: finding out what is actually installed, what still has a working account attached to it, and what can be brought back under one interface.

What we look after

Lighting control. Keypad programming, scene design, load troubleshooting and re-engraving, on Control4, Lutron and comparable platforms.

Audio. Sonos and multi-room audio — zones that do what their labels say, grouped sensibly, with the streaming accounts actually signed in.

Cameras and entry. Camera coverage that answers a real question rather than filling a hard drive, recording that is retained long enough to be useful, video intercom and gate access that works from a phone.

Climate and shading. Thermostats, motorised shades and the schedules behind them, including the freeze-protection settings that matter in a house left empty in February.

Second homes and empty houses

A house that sits empty for ten months needs the opposite of a house lived in daily. Automation stops being a convenience and becomes an early warning system: temperature and leak sensors wired into something that will actually raise an alarm, cameras a caretaker can check from town, and freeze-protection settings that hold when the power blinks in February.

Arrivals matter too. Systems are woken, updated and tested before the family lands, so nobody spends the first afternoon of a holiday resetting a router.