Savant Event Shows Off Apple Flexibility

It is fitting that whole-house control manufacturer Savant held its second-ever dealer conference in early May not far from where the Pilgrims first landed in America.

Just like those first daring adventurers, Savant aims to help integrators explore a strange new world where time and money are not eaten up by endless hours writing programming code.

The company created a whirlwind of attention when it first showed off its revolutionary prototype designs and its drag-and-drop RacePoint Blueprint design system that claims to eliminate gobs of dealers’ programming time.

But even more revolutionary is that Savant bases its open-platform system on Apple products, not Microsoft.

“We were careful to announce that we were using someone else’s platform before,” says Craig Spinner, director of marketing at Savant. “Now we are embracing it. The main reason is because both consumers and dealers are embracing the Apple platform. Everyone loves Apple!”

Indeed, Savant is now an Apple Proprietary Solutions Provider (PSP), which means it can service products at the chip level. “Apple does not give us a corporate endorsement, but we’re on their radar screen,” said Spinner.

Apple’s cooperation at the event included a presentation by Sal Soghoian, product manager for Automated Technologies at Apple, that outlined the openness of Mac OS X, and highlighted the power of its integrated automation architecture.

Sporting a black beret, a gray beard and shoulder-length hair, Soghoian looks like a cool musician who just stepped out of a basement jazz club.

A year ago, the Apple platform raised some eyebrows of concern among attendees, but this year attendees had their fears allayed by some powerful presentations. One of the biggest question marks with a drag-and-drop system is the seeming lack of programming flexibility.

After all, when a customer is paying hefty dollars for a touchpanel control and awesome on-screen display, he wants the system to do detailed multi-step, macro functions. He wants all the bells and whistles.

But how can you easily create macro commands using such a simplified programming methodology? Easy, says Soghoian, who used Apple’s Automator application to write custom workflows on Mac OS X within Savant’s Rosie platform. In about 15 minutes, he slickly built a workflow “applet” using Automator to grab text off the Web and convert it to the spoken word on an iPhone.

“It’s a great application for you to sell to your customers,” says Soghoian. “They will love your forever. Savant is doing incredible, innovative things. It is really based on core principles of success.”

Savant president Jim Carroll explained how applets hold the key to opening up a giant avenue of recurring revenue for dealers. For example, he described how an applet, like the one demoed by Soghoian, could be written to have the Wall St. Journal read to a homeowner every morning while the client takes a shower.

Carroll says dealers can charge $1,500 for such an application, which takes about $75 in manpower to create.

“In a competitive landscape, you will have an advantage because you will have applets and your competitors won’t. It’s the cool factor … the sizzle beyond the sizzle,” says Carroll.

Soghoian adds, “One of the hidden secrets of Mac OS X is how much automation is built into it.” He cited programs like Bonjour (zero configuration networking) and Core Animation (high-end media and image manipulation that allows Savant to create its unique spinning OSD).

It appears the only limitations revealed at the event between Apple and Savant involve buying music on iTunes and downloading movies from AppleTV.

Apple still requires the Savant system (and any other system for that matter) to move the homeowner into the iTunes or AppleTV interfaces.

Products Galore Debut

Bob Madonna, CEO of Savant, says bluntly, “We are not just trying to develop a product. We are trying to change the industry. You should never need a guy sitting at the kitchen table of a customer’s home writing code so the homeowner will simply be able to turn on his TV.”

He estimates that 10-20 percent of the installation expense is from programming. “That’s what we want to change,” he adds.

That change Madonna describes has many facets. Savant is hammering home to its dealers that they need to create repeatable systems, offer the “wow” factor, build in lots of profit, eliminate complex programming, increase customer satisfaction, offer high-quality products and systems, self-generate cool-looking GUIs without having to hire an outside designer, and self-generate commands and actions without having to hire a programming specialist.

This capability is in addition to the dealer’s ability to create his own touchpanel skin designs using Quartz Composer animation software that is built in to the Mac Leopard operating system.

Moreover, the core of Mac OS X (called Darwin) is based on open, Linux standard, to which thousands of developers have access.

Indeed, Savant’s product line-sheet went from one page to seven pages at the conference, with the highlight being a new series of expandable Rosie controllers, which are based upon an Apple Mac mini and feature A/V processing and HDMI switching.

Among the new products are the:

Rosie System Controller – a new smaller, expandable Linux-based processor.
Rosie System 2 – the number reflects that it has two configurable input slots.
Rosie System 3 -- with three inputs, but it does not have an onboard host.
Rosie System 12 – with 6 audio/6 video slots or 12 audio inputs. It has a host onboard and a touchscreen on the front.
Rosie System 24 – The big Kahuna system with 24 slots and an internal switching card. It can send out six 7.1 surround-sound systems in the home.
Traditional Remote – Along with the cool candy-dish remote, Savant introduced a traditional remote.
Keypads – hard-key wall-mounted keypads are now available, not just touchpanels.
Touchpanels – an array of 5, 7, 9, 12 and 13.3-inch in-wall touchpanels, and a 13-inch wireless unit.
New Interfaces – Savant announced that its system can interface with an iPhone, Samsung Q1 or Nokia N800.
Rosie Touch 24 – a computer screen with touchpad capability, for ultra-geeky customers.
Widgets – The company unveiled a series of widgets that dealers can add to their systems, including weather, stock reports, sports, and CCTV cameras.

Courting Dealers

In all, there were 110 dealers representing 70 companies from four countries at the Savant event. The average company had $4 million in revenue.

Several integrators told CE Pro they were impressed with the system, especially the RacePoint Blueprint design software and the new System Monitor software that allows dealers remote access to customers’ systems in order to reduce costly service calls.

In essence, the drag-and-drop Blueprint software is a four-step process:

1.Place the component
2.Draw the connections
3.Compile the system (one button)
4.Generate the workflows (one button) … then save.

“Blueprint is the product for the dealers. The rest of the Savant product line is for the customers,” says Spinner. The system is designed to reduce costs of bidding, design, installation and programming, eliminating the “necessary evil” of outside programming.

To date, Savant has loaded 829 separate product profiles through its Excellence in AV program from numerous manufacturers into the system. All the profiles are written by Savant and checked for quality assurance, so dealers aren’t forced to share untested profiles.

However, dealers can write their own profiles if they wish.

The aforementioned System Monitor software not only allows remote service, but also provides summary reports of all system activity and gives an easily identifiable “red light” indication when there is a problem. It also generates automatic service requests if there is a problem.

According to Carroll, a whole-house automation system that is easy to program helps fuel profits. As a former integrator himself, Carroll offered some financial examples that reveal a company must often charge 6x to 7x a programmer’s hourly wage to attain profit.

“Savant immediately boosts your profit by reducing your programming costs. It also makes your junior technicians a more valuable resource because they can be easily taught to use Blueprint,” he says.