As if you didn’t already live your life from your phone, now you can control your home theater or commercial audio and video systems from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, or your Android smartphone, too.
Earlier this year, Crestron Control Systems announced compatibility with Apple and Android-based devices. Anywhere you are, at any time of day, you can access your home’s or business’s technology systems to re-program or change the settings. Forget to turn the lights out? Just do it from your iPad. Wondering if your operations manager turned off power to the main rack? Just log in through Crestron’s app to find out.
It’s easy, convenient…and it’s cool, too. But we don’t recommend that you skip a hardwired remote control. Why not? Don’t you already store your life on your smartphone? That’s exactly why.
There’s a greater chance Something Bad will happen to your phone — water damage, shock damage, loss — than it will to a keypad hardwired into your wall. If you lose your phone, you’re already lost. What if you just want to go home, turn on a great movie in 7.1 surround sound and forget your stress? Exactly. That’s why a hard-wired remote (even if you only use it every once in a while) is a necessity.
Your Backups Need Backups
Data recovery, disaster recovery and back-up specialists like to say, “Having one back up is like having no back-ups. Having two back-ups is like having one. Data should always be backed up in three places, in three ways.”
The same goes for your home or business control system. You want multiple ways to access it. If your control system is on your home or business IP network, you also want it hardwired directly into the system. Then smartphone access becomes your third back-up, and you’re all set. If you access your control system only through your network, what happens if the network goes down? That’s just another piece of technology you’ve temporarily lost.
We know that your business runs on technology (and your family isn’t too happy without it, either.) So having a hardwired keypad, plus wireless network access and control through the “cloud” (i.e., your iPhone or iPad) is the best way to ensure you’ll always be able to access the systems you need, when you need them.