We all have a friend who doesn't believe in experts. For the perennial 'Jack of all Trades,' home automation is a robust environment. "You don't need to hire anyone," they say," I can do that for you."  So, when is the 'king-of-DIY' the wrong answer to home automation, and when can you use them safely? Alternatively, when should you call for a professional to help you set up the technology in your home?

If you believe the marketing, then the latest networking craze, mesh, might look like the answer to all your networking problems. The hype goes, “Say goodbye to dead spots and buffering with a connection that doesn’t slow you down, even as you add more devices.” But beware, nothing is as simple as it seems, and mesh networking may only be the correct answer for a small number of users.

When Captain Picard and the crew of the USS Enterprise entered the Holodeck, they knew they were in for an experience. By going to that special place, they opened themselves up to a digital and virtual experience different from their normal face-to-face life. While BRAVAS can’t offer you the hologram experience that Jean Luc and team can, there is lots to learn from Star Trek - The Next Generation.

There is no point in having a security system if no one knows when it goes off. That is why, for years, companies have offered remote monitoring of those systems for you. But with every doorbell manufacture offering cheap ‘professional’ monitoring of your security systems, why should you come to a professional like BRAVAS for that service?

Partly the answer is, like everything, you get what you pay for, but there are three questions you should be asking yourself.

Bob Knight once said, “I don’t believe in luck, I believe in preparation.” My guess is that he was talking about basketball, but he could also have been talking about pre-wiring your home. By pre-wiring, we mean all those low-power cables that are going to control light, shades, audio, video, security and other home automation systems.

If you get the prewire wrong, it can be both frustrating and expensive. Frustrating because you will find there are elements of home technology that may not be possible in your home and expensive because, well, fixing a bad prewire means taking down walls.

At BRAVAS, we recently published our 70-plus page Solution Guide – which you can download here. In this blog, we will review three different ways you can use it to help you make better decisions about how smart you want your smart home to be.

The first way will be ‘short and sweet’ – designed for someone who just has a few minutes and wants to make sure they are not missing anything. The second approach will be more ‘focused’ on specific areas you might be interested in. The final way, which we call Cover-to-Cover, will be the most thorough look at what you should be considering. Whichever way works for you, if you want someone to help you work through our Solution Guide with you, let us know, and we would love to help.

The latest BRAVAS Luxury Living podcast (available on YouTube) explores working with a company like BRAVAS. We didn’t mean it to be an advert for BRAVAS but a resource for anyone working with a technology provider for their luxury home. In the podcast, we interview Ryan Anderson, the CEO of BRAVAS, and he explored several key learnings from his time in the industry.

The podcast is about 30 minutes long and is worth watching if you are about to build or remodel your home. If you don’t have the time, here are some quick read ideas.

On the BRAVAS Luxury Living Podcast, we were recently joined by Jimmy Paschke, Sales Manager at SurgeX Residential. We discussed many issues around getting the power systems right for your luxury smart home. You can listen to the podcast here. A couple of the ideas we discussed may be worth a deeper dive - Surge Protection and Power Conditioning.

If, like most people, you have been watching more Netflix and Amazon Prime than regular TV, you may be wondering about ‘cutting the cord.’ It seems like a good idea and could even promise to save you money, but there are risks and problems. While there are thousands of blogs covering how to get rid of your cable and satellite TV services, few explain the complexities and downsides. In this blog, we will discuss some of the pros and cons of going without regular TV service.

One of the most significant differences between a well-designed home automation system and a poorly designed one is scenes. Worse, you maybe have no scenes set up at all. In this blog, we will review what scenes are, pick the top 6 every home should have, and talk about getting them right for you. If you think we have missed some, let us know.