Shore homes are lively over the summer months, but when the summer heat fades and it’s time to go, most Shore homes are left unattended over the winter. Owning a smart home means never having to worry about your vacation home when you’re not there. Having the ability to monitor your home remotely and control the lights, temperature and even door locks gives you security and peace of mind. Handling all of the design and engineering that goes into creating a smart home, Neil Wiessler, owner of Shore Sound & Cinema, is the go-to Shore home automation guru who can have you connected to your home and ready to return at the tap of a screen.

Prior to founding Shore Sound & Cinema in 2005, Wiessler owned and operated a local network IT company, giving him foresight into the future of the connected home. “I saw the convergence of everything eventually becoming connected so as an IT company, we had an upper hand on learning how to integrate and create smart homes,” he says. House & Home spoke to Wiessler about up-and-coming smart home technology.

Why was South Jersey a major candidate for the home of Shore Sound & Cinema?
I was born and raised on the island and grew up in the lower Chelsea area of Atlantic City. Ultimately, [I] moved to Margate and Margate became my home. [Shore homeowners], that’s our clientele,  so when I transitioned  my IT company to create an audio/video company , I wanted Shore right in the title. I grew up here, I surfed and skateboarded here on the island. Beach sand has been between my toes pretty much since I was born, so the name Shore Sound & Cinema came naturally.

Can you tell me what Shore Sound & Cinema’s process is for home automation, from  he customer coming in to the end result?  
From the first phone call to the first meeting, it’s a little bit of a fact-finding mission. When we talk to new clients, we want to get a sense of what their wants and needs are, so there’s an interview process. If it’s new construction, we’ll get blueprints from the builder or architect and then schedule a meeting with the  client in our showroom. We will review the products and services we offer and then go through a check list of what they want. For most of our clients, these Shore homes are not their primary residence, so it’s important for them to see what’s going on at the house when they’re not there. Once we know the scope of the project, we will start the design process.

How many devices do you typically suggest homeowners include when doing home automation?
It’s up to the clients. Our go-to automation platform  is Control4. With Control4, we are capable of scaling from a condo or small home to the largest beachfront or bayfront home, so we can offer as many devices that the client needs. Typically, we’re going to be controlling the lighting … sometimes just key areas; other times, the whole home. HVAC is always a given, as my clients want to raise and lower the temperature remotely. Other top priorities are: bulletproof networks, music throughout the home, security systems and video cameras. On new construction projects—this is the ideal time to run all the wires possible for today and the future. Wire is cheap, so I always tell my clients even if you don’t think you’re going to use it now, let’s plan for everything.

What are the benefits of going “smart?”
A lot has to do with the individual client. A smart  home can have a green component for energy conservation … or for convenience and peace of mind. We’ve done LEED-certified smart homes  that will raise and lower motorized shades depending on the sun load throughout the day and adjust temperature accordingly to save energy . … Other smart home projects are based on convenience where the client is capable of remotely managing the home. It might be as simple  as not walking into a freezing cold home in the wintertime after being away for months or to avoid coming into a hot house after spending all day on the beach. Features like disarming the alarm system and unlocking a door remotely are also convenient advantages of having a smart home.

Control4 allows us to control everything from a single app. Our clients do not want 17 different apps to control their ho me. Within the Control4 app my clients have access to audio, video, lights, HVAC—everything. They can turn on and off the lights, raise and lower the shades, turn the temperature up and down, unlock the doors, open the garage door, set the pool temperature, start the music  playing and even turn on the hot tub if they wanted to.

How can homeowners incorporate their door locks into the smart home setup?
Control4 integrates perfectly with all the major lock manufactures allowing my clients to remotely give access to their homes without having t o give out a key or door code. If they need to let someone into the house for repairs, cleaning or to let a friend in when they are away from the home … all they need to do is touch a button on their smartphone and their house is unlocked. Simple and easy!

Can you tell me about the voice recognition aspect of a smart home?  
Voice recognition is still in its infancy but it’s getting better every day. We’re  all accustomed  to Siri, Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s HomePod. Voice recognition is not yet a natural language product. Have you ever asked Alexa to play Bob Marley and she ends up reading you a Wikipedia page of Harley Davidson? Voice recognition currently forces you to speak in a very , non-natural parsed syntax. Turn on the lights in the living room. Turn on the TV in the living room. Set the temperature in the living  room to 72 degrees. So we’re speaking like robots and not like human beings.

We now offer an AI [artificial intelligence] platform called Josh.AI … Josh.AI is a voice recognition technology that is a natural language technology. You can walk into your living room and say, ‘O K Josh turn on the TV, set the temperature to 72 degrees and turn on the lights,’ and Josh knows from the proximity of where you are in the  home, which lights to turn on and which TV to turn on and what thermostat to raise or lower the temperature. Josh is a very cool, very powerful voice recognition product. Total voice recognition is coming. One day we will literally be able to walk into the house and talk  to the house like it’s your best friend or your child. Right now, that level of voice recognition is not quite here yet, but with technology like Josh.AI, we will be there soon!

Is having a smart home safe and reliable?
Yes. The Control4 platform that we offer is extraordinarily safe and the level of security encryption that’s built into it is very stout. The networks we provide for our clients’ homes are commercial grade, enterprise level networks. We take our networks and our clients’ security very seriously. The next-door neighbor’s kid is  not going to gain access to your smart home and a lot of that goes into our primary wheel house, which is networking.

Why is now a good time to set up a home automation system?
With the advent of smartphones and DIY stand-alone products available from retailers everywhere,  the cost of a connected home has been driven down making a smart home more affordable. All of the major manufacturers have also begun  to understand the value of their devices being able to communicate well with other manufacturers’ products allowing for smoother integration, so there’s never been a better time to plan your smart home.

What sets your company apart from others?
I think it goes back to our  level of understanding networks and how devices communicate on the network. Today, the network is the most important thing you can p ut in a home. Everything from refrigerators to washing machines have become network aware. … Everything lives on the network. There’s a  bit of a fallacy [that] you don’t need the wire for technology today; that is 1 million percent inaccurate. Everything that we can run  a network wire to, we do. The only thing that we want on our clients’ network wirelessly are the mobile devices, so when you come into t he home, your laptops, your iPads, your iPhone, your Android—whatever platform you’re using—will be on the wireless network. But your TVs , your Apple TVs, your Rokus, your video cameras, everything is hardwired. You want the most reliable, fastest experience and you’re just  not going to get that with wireless devices.

Shore Sound & Cinema
Margate City, N.J. | (609) 645-1300 | S2Cinema.com 

Published (and copyrighted) in House & Home, Volume 19, Issue 6 (December 2018). 
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