The Smart Home Continuum
A Full Spectrum of Home Automation from Audio Innovations
writer- cassidy mantor, photographer- Tim Brown Media, architect- Susan Desko
An evening in a smart home from Audio Innovations is nothing short of brilliant. The boulders are illuminated on demand by calling, “Moonlight” to the system.
There are two kinds of people in the world: skeptics afraid of technology and those who want to automate their lives. Jess Goitiandia, founder of Audio Innovations, works with both kinds of clients to design, install, and maintain custom systems that fit their homes and unique lifestyles. In the 30 years that he’s been in business, he has observed that often those who are hesitant to adopt automated systems in their homes have had bad experiences in the past with clunky programming. Jess has a tangible excitement for the art of the possible in a smart home. “Let’s make it work,” he says. “Let’s do something cool.”
Jess knows cool. He has an applied science degree in robotics where he studied pneumatics, hydraulics, circuit design, and programming. He was attracted to robotics because of the consistency with which systems perform and how an experience could be engineered to achieve seemingly anything. He considered working for Disney in animatronics but ultimately chose to move back home with his wife. He opened his own company in Hailey and began repairing VCRs and stereos. The business quickly morphed into complete automation when customers recognized that if he could fix their TVs he could fix their homes.
Founded in 1992, Audio Innovations creates custom control systems for audio, lighting, shades, and security, as well as automating control of geothermal heating, snowmelt, pools, spas, firepits, and gates. The company also specializes in the unique operation of Glass Garage Doors and one-of-a-kind architectural features like stargazing decks with sound, video, projectors, and more.
The best way to appreciate how Audio Innovations custom-tailors its systems to meet its clients’ lifestyles is to take a look inside a one-of-a-kind “unicorn” home. The company designed it for clients who were early adopters so in love with tech that Jess even programmed their smart doorbell to ring with the theme song to The Jetsons.
“This house is the most sophisticated one I’ve been fortunate to work on.”
-Jess Goitiandia, Founder, Audio Innovations
Automation for the Early Adopter
When Jess first met with the homeowners, their comment was, “We understand automation and what it does for us so we want all that is available.” They knew they wanted more. Jess’s team programmed their new Seattle home while at the same time installing and programming their Sun Valley home.
“This house is the most sophisticated one I’ve been fortunate to work on,” Jess shares. The home is made of concrete, stone, steel, and glass. Grand boulders that are 12-14’ tall sit outside the home. Vertical slices of rock and customized steel, stone, and lava tables make for an elegant impression. The house is a work of art behind the scenes as much as it is in its architectural form.
The house sits close to the river, so a consideration when building was how deep they could dig sewer lines. They were relatively near the surface of the ground, a placement that would make the lines more susceptible to freezing. Audio Innovations installed a temperature sensor that drives circulation through radiant tubing to make sure the sewer lines don’t freeze. The bridge between the garage and the main living area is another spot in the home where Audio Innovations monitors the temperature and turns on heat if needed. It is the main pathway for all water for the home, so if it freezes, the entire home is down. “We know at a glance what windows or doors are open and can grant remote access to unlock doors, mag locks, and keypad entry codes from these control centers,” Jess explains. “If someone rings the doorbell and the homeowners are watching TV in the living room, their image pops up on the TV.”
“When the bug screen was closed, the window was closed, and the shades were down; the shades had to go up before the lift with the pillows could pop up. That also had to trigger the screen to go up and the doors to open to gain physical access to the space.”
-Jess Goitiandia, Founder, Audio Innovations
One of the more sophisticated engineering components in this project is the stargazing amphitheater, a custom architectural element that has hidden motorized lifts that open up a storage compartment. Imagine the same process as a hidden TV that pops up from a cabinet at the end of a bed except here, it’s pillows and seating to enjoy the night sky. Structured like an inverted firepit, the home’s architect designed this feature to receive natural convection heat from the great room on the first floor when the window is open. Jess explains the programming feat it was to plan for every possible scenario: “When the bug screen was closed, the window was closed, and the shades were down; the shades had to go up before the lift with the pillows could pop up. That also had to trigger the screen to go up and the doors to open to gain physical access to the space.” Audio Innovations considered every variable to make sure there wouldn’t be a problem and the end result is magnificent.
Another complicated programming situation in the home was in its garage. The homeowner selects “Garage 1” or “Garage 2” and that particular door opens, but Audio Innovations did masterful work behind the scenes to make it that simple. This home has three garage doors and three bays that visually look like one glass wall panel with expanded metal in the glass. As each door opens it overlaps the space of the adjacent door/panel, basically swapping positions so there is no way to exit without proper position programming. Jess and his team wrote custom code to allow for the individual doors to slide independently in certain directions for ultimate functionality and ease. When it comes to automation, he references cruise control and wiper sensors as forms of automation and draws the comparison that now people take those features for granted, but for some, that acceptance and adoption took time.
“When I first met our client at his house in Seattle, I noticed he had a beautiful home but his automation was clunky,” Jess recalls. “He said, ‘I want better than this.’ We gave him a different option and he liked our user interface.” As a resident of Seattle, the client was familiar with everyday applications for automation and knew he wanted it all. Jess chuckles, sharing that when he asked his client how much he wanted to automate – pools, spas, etc. – the client said, “Stop at the toilets!”
Audio Innovations can automate virtually any element of the home, depending on the product that the contractor may have installed. Many products are cloud-based and go from phone app to wifi network–from network to internet, from internet to cloud–and then back to the house in reverse order. Those transfers of information may cause issues with features in the house if the internet goes down. As much as Audio Innovations can, they will wire everything, yet Jess honors the human in the house, too. “I don’t want a failure, so I’m not willing to use the cloud for the disparate inner systems of the house,” Jess shares. “If you want the pool and spa on the system, it has to be out of the cloud so we can still control it. With the cloud, regardless of what technicians state, you never know if it’s receiving all the code.”
The spa is on Audio Innovation’s system, so when the clients are flying in from out of town or out to eat at a local restaurant, they can turn on their hot tub and get it up to their favorite temperature. “It sounds like a house built for George Jetson, but it’s really pretty easy,” Jess shares. The home’s outdoor hot tub has a pneumatic patio made of steel and stone over the tub that weighs somewhere in the couple-thousand-pound range. The homeowner pushes a button and it opens via air. “Between some music, the river, the fireplace, and the hot tub, it’s a pretty cool setup,” he adds.
Audio Innovations’ systems are flexible and easily updated. Homeowners or their property managers routinely change the timeframes that their shades go up and down based on the angle of the sun at the home’s particular elevation. Called daylight harvesting, this protects their art collection and monitors the home throughout the year. If the customer wants to take charge in changing the schedule versus letting the programming do it, they grab their phone, open the schedule, and change the time to 4:23pm today versus 4:27pm last week. That intuitive user experience helps even the most tech-skeptical people become willing to embrace the intelligence of the system.
“It sounds like a house built for George Jetson, but it’s really pretty easy.”
-Jess Goitiandia, Founder, Audio Innovations
The Storage Closet / AV Head End: An Approachable Master Control Room
“Imagine an octopus,” Jess explains. “The body of the octopus is in the storage closet, and every tentacle goes out to a TV, a shade, a generator, a geothermal well. The list goes on with what we do in the automation side, and that hardwiring infrastructure meets in the head end.” Also called the rack room, these rooms are sophisticated wiring masterpieces that make a smart home function on the back end.
Some of these rack rooms have twice the amount of wiring as do some commercial AV departments. While some clients prefer to only automate lights, shades, stereos, and TVs, Audio Innovations takes it to the next level. The head end shares equipment through the entire house. “If there are 15 TVs in the house, that could mean 15 cable boxes or 15 AppleTVs–a maintenance nightmare,” Jess says. “Crestron is the platform we use to share sources from room to room, so we can link up the same 15 TVs to three cable boxes in the head end and label them ‘Mom,’ ‘Dad,’ or ‘Kids’ for added convenience.” The head end also means that there is one place to keep track of the camera system, wifi, security, lighting, and shades. The “Jetsons House” that Audio Innovations installed and programmed has 190 motorized shades that in turn have their own power supplies that have to communicate and function with the broader system. The typical 3,500-square-foot house might have one processor, but Audio Innovations’ homes have four or five. They require sophisticated programming to make them simple, and Audio Innovations prides itself in making large homes feel small when it comes to the interface.
“If there are 15 TVs in the house, that could mean 15 cable boxes or 15 AppleTVs–a maintenance nightmare. Crestron is the platform we use to share sources from room to room, so we can link up the same 15 TVs to three cable boxes in the head end and label them ‘Mom,’ ‘Dad,’ or ‘Kids’ for added convenience.”
-Jess Goitiandia, Founder, Audio Innovations
The Future
According to classic TV analysts, George Jetson would have been born in 2022. The irony is that while the show was set in the year 2062–100 years in the future from its original air date–we’re using a lot of their technology already. They had talking alarm clocks that told jokes. Siri and Alexa do that. Jane worked out in front of a flatscreen TV. We have the Mirror and Peloton. They had video chats and smartwatches. We’re already on Series 8 of the Apple Watch.
W“We grew up being told that you’re never going to have a calculator with you, so you need to know how to do math,” Jess says. “The sky is the limit now in that sense. People are embracing more technology than they have before, but there’s still apprehension with phones. What you can achieve in your house is very doable with the right integration and contractor.”
It all goes back to the idea of being afraid of new technologies or embracing them. Even if a previous experience with a smart home was miserable, it’s hard not to see the argument for certain levels of automation. When considering walking around a 20,000-square-foot house and turning 300 lights on one at a time, it makes sense to simplify and achieve the same effect at the push of a button.”
“We grew up being told that you’re never going to have a calculator with you, so you need to know how to do math. The sky is the limit now in that sense. People are embracing more technology than they have before, but there’s still apprehension with phones. What you can achieve in your house is very doable with the right integration and contractor.”
-Jess Goitiandia, Founder, Audio Innovations
Although Audio Innovations typically will set up security and cameras on the exterior of a house, they routinely exclude bedrooms, bathrooms, and other intimate living spaces. Individual cameras can be turned off manually–such as when getting in the pool or cooking in the kitchen–and will have default settings to turn them back on at a set time automatically for security. “You never know how far someone wants to take their system,” Jess says. “It comes down to us creating a fix to what a client might consider a problem. We do a lot of one-offs. If someone wants something specific, we make it happen.” Audio Innovations’ systems are crafted to preserve privacy and give clients the control and visibility they desire. Their level of service and technical expertise creates a sense of ease in home automation, which is a luxuriously smart way to live.
