Should everything in your house be connected to the Internet? "Perhaps," says Inder Kanwal, the founder of the Vancouver-based automation firm The Smartest Builder. "It depends on how you value reliability and privacy."
The story of The Smartest Builder began ten years ago when Inder first encountered Loxone and saw the opportunities it brings to the high-end residential market.
My dad and I started the automation business in 2009, building industrial controllers. The software industry had already transitioned to SaaS, so we wanted our hardware to have a cloud layer for control and management. A security incident made us realize that relying purely on the Cloud would be significantly complex. It prompted us to look elsewhere, and we almost accidentally discovered Loxone, a new tech startup in Austria. They shipped us a developer kit, we learned how to program it, and — you wouldn't believe it — that first installation we put in place 15 years ago is still going strong, without hiccups.
I founded The Smartest Builder with the goal of making home automation accessible to all customers. Over time, we started taking on more complex smart residential projects in Canada, the US, and Mexico. As we grew more confident, I launched a YouTube channel called The Loxone Guy to show people what Loxone can do. The channel helped us with lead generation and public education. Our expertise in home automation has caught the attention of high-end condo developers and luxury home builders, so we are moving to Southern California later this year to be closer to our fastest-growing market.
Yes, high-end residential projects are our primary market segment. In our early days, we reached out to homeowners with the promise of a more reliable, Cloud-free solution. Loxone's European build quality and long-term reliability combined with a Cloud-optional approach was enticing, a stark contrast to a lot of Cloud-native automation systems.
It's ingrained in the hardware and software architecture; you can see it even in the authentication dialog of the Loxone Miniserver: the username and the password input fields are both case-sensitive. Having the right security framework was a concern for the engineering team at Loxone from day one.
The ability to establish encrypted communication with third-party automation components through the SSL/TLS handshake, which came with the Loxone Miniserver Gen 2 version, unlocked the possibilities of home automation in modern smart homes today. Thomas Moser, a co-founder of Loxone, wanted all hardware components to be updateable, and his vision paid off with free software updates available on both the mobile app and the Loxone hardware.
People talk about controlling their TV or cat litter box with voice commands. But a home automation system is different in that it is a full system not a single function; it aims to remove mundane, repetitive tasks. As humans, we go through life stages — things that worked for you in your 40s are not the same when you are in your 60s. These life changes are something we can address with Loxone today.
How would you feel if you could gradually adjust your interior or exterior blinds to protect your artwork from harsh sunlight? You can outsource that task to your home automation system, which will do it reliably and without complaints and adjust based on the season, weather, or time of day.
The only issue we ever see is with the network. You can connect the Loxone Miniserver to wired Ethernet for monitoring and local and remote app access. When people tell us, "Hey, my Loxone stopped working," we start our troubleshooting steps with the LAN, modem, or switches. I can confidently say that once Loxone is functional, if any issues arise 99.9% of your Loxone issue is related to the changes you made in your network, cables, or DNS changes.
To be fair to the clients, it takes time to grasp what automation can do for them. People building high-end homes are familiar with smart switches, for example. However, WiFi/RF switches are typically point solutions rather than automation platforms.
You could upgrade from smart switches to a panelized lighting solution like Lutron Homeworks, Crestron, or Savant. They typically come as a kit and are not very customizable. But now we're in this exciting transition period to low-voltage lighting, where Loxone can give you significantly more flexibility and control with simplified wiring. Some North American clients choose Loxone because of its favorable price point: the ROI of Loxone is considerably higher than that of Control 4 simply because it has more features, more capabilities per dollar spent.
A significant portion of our business comes from designers who are quite specific about the aesthetic appeal and functionality they are after. We often encounter clients who have been in a Loxone home before, typically in Europe, and these homes tend to have sleek designs and functionality.
Loxone offers these incredible backlit touch switches, integrating various functions for each room, from lighting to music to shading to HVAC. The minimalist European square version appealed to designers and design-minded architects. However, the real breakthrough came when Loxone introduced the Decora-style switch, an adaptation of the Loxone Touch switch for the North American market. Because it uses the same gang electrical wall box as standard North American switches. I should say that these wall switches are currently all low voltage and connected via tree or air protocols to the miniserver.
There's an energy policy gap between Europe and America, and I'll give you an example: daylight harvesting. In essence, daylight harvesting reduces the amount of energy needed for lighting. If I turn on the light or walk into the room, a light sensor will first detect the ambient light and only add enough lighting output to achieve the desired brightness so your LED lights turn on at an energy-efficient 38% rather than 100%. It's such an easy way to save energy. Loxone has been doing this for years, in their system it’s called Daylight Responsive Lighting.
As you get more people into energy monitoring, energy modes, heating, and humidity management, you'll see the conversations shift where Loxone becomes the energy controller with the added ability to control exterior blinds and motorized shutters; a European standard. Energy management and efficiency are where I see Loxone truly shine in North America. California, New York, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia are pushing hard for updated energy efficiency policies and people want to save money and be more self-reliant.
Particularly in new home construction, we can quickly compound energy savings with simple adjustments at little to no cost to the homeowner. Setting up a home automation logic so that when you start charging your car, the system can turn off the dryer or a pool pump — that is trivial for Loxone.
I enjoy working with clients to figure out lighting for the night hours. We did this with one of our clients recently where their kids wake up in the middle of the night to go to their parents' bedroom. So we set up the hallway switch to turn on the ceiling recessed lights to a low brightness when pressed at night, and then if the same button is pressed in the daytime hours the lights go to full brightness. We essentially programmed multiple functions for the switch as the family needed, and the family was able to adjust the switch as needed from the app.
We had a lot of fun working on modern hidden doors with electromagnetic locks. In this one project, when you touch the invisible Loxone Touch Surface switch on the kitchen countertop, the hidden door masquerading as a bookshelf pops open, and as you walk into a refrigerated cellar, the LED light inside turns on.
One of our projects was a one-of-a-kind custom light fixture that looked like a cloud formation with ten different LED circuits, where we had to do a lot of math to account for voltage drop, wire length, gauge and led strip segment positions and count. The details paid off, and the learnings from that project is that you must do 16-bit LED dimming for smoothest transitions; it's such a high-end look. With 8-bit dimming, you notice those 256 brightness steps, especially in LED dense setups where you go from zero to 5%.
Nowadays we collaborate closely with interior designers more frequently than ever before, especially on high-end residential builds. After a little while, you start to understand how they envision their works and all the details that are required for their vision to come to life. When you want to show your artwork, you want to do that with the right light, the right lumens, the right CRI so that the colors are accurate; it's like a curation. It's not dissimilar to what they do at the Smithsonian.
Top image — Casa Cancún by architect Pedro Riveroll with a home automation system designed by Grizzly Tec, a Gold Loxone partner in Houston, TX, in close collaboration with The Smartest Builder.
