"While the home automation market continues to grow each year, current solutions only address customers who are building high-end custom homes or doing major reconstruction on an existing home. Homeowners need a more affordable way to automate their existing homes without the headaches and expense of major remodeling."


(Source: Control4.com)

About

What is Home Automation?

Let’s get one thing straight – home automation is not about cool gadgets (although for some of us, it could be just about that and we’d be happy!). It’s about making busy lives easier, or as Control4® quite accurately puts it – “Everyday Easy“. It’s about integrating multiple systems around the house that weren’t designed to talk to each other and making them play nicely together in a way that is seamless and easy to use for everyday people like you and me.

With Total Control (Manawatu) Limited and Control4® home automation products the possibilities are almost endless. Here are just some of the things that we can do for you:

  • Solutions for new homes, renovation projects or retrofit into existing homes!
  • Multi-room audio
  • Whole-house video distribution
  • One remote to control your whole house and audio/video devices!
  • Wall-mounted or portable touchscreens
  • Whole-house lighting control
  • Integrate your motorised devices, such as curtains/blinds, projection screen, gates or garage doors
  • Integrate compatable security alarm systems and cameras
  • Send you an email triggered by any event(s) that have occurred in the house (e.g. alarm has been triggered, lights left on, etc)
  • Perform custom programming on the system to make your life “Everyday Easy” – for example, turn on your hallway lights dimly if the kids get up at night, and turn them back off again when no motion detected for a couple of minutes
  • You can control your house via the internet from anywhere in the world!  (Subscription required)
  • We can access your system remotely (you need to authorise us to do this!) to diagnose problems, perform custom programming, or upgrade firmware
  • Control4® lighting products and custom programming can actually cut electricity consumption (and save you money!)

Who are Total Control?

Total Control (Manawatu) Limited was formed by Company Director, Michael White, in 2008 when he discovered that the Manawatu/Horowhenua/Kapiti regions were largely unrepresented in the home automation market, and he was struggling to find suitable installers/integrators for his own Control4® home automation project. Control4 NZ also recognised the need for an installer in these regions and agreed to provide the necessary training for Total Control to achieve Tech 1 certification.

Mike firmly believes that the NZ market is ready to embrace home automation and, until now, it has been waiting for products that are not just the playground for the wealthy. Now those products are available and our wonderful region has a company to consult, install and integrate them into our homes.

If you want “Total Control“, then contact us for a free no-obligation initial consultation, or even just to discuss what you would like to achieve in your own home.

You can read about Mike’s nighttime hobby here.

Why Control4?

When Mike was investigating the various home automation options available, and getting more demoralised by the minute at the cost and limitations of current systems, he stumbled across several articles and forums dedicated to Control4® products. Encouraged by what he was reading, he found that not only were these products based on non-proprietary standards (TCP/IP, Wi-fi, Zigbee), but they were also aimed at a much larger proportion of the consumer market (price-wise) and they were now available in New Zealand!

The products are designed so that you can start small (automate your home theatre, for example) and gradually add more functionality (such as lighting control, multi-room audio, etc) as you need it or can afford it. Not only that, but you don’t necessarily have to be building a new home or renovating an existing one to install these products – there are many “retrofit” options available too.

After visiting a Control4® dealer in Wellington (the closest available to him in those days), Mike was convinced that he had found what he was looking for – a home automation system that was realistically priced, offered a good range of products that could automate virtually anything you could throw at it (including multi-room audio), and had a NZ-based distributor and support in place.