Savant Event Shows Off Apple Flexibility

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.