Founded in 2003 by Krystian Zajac as a business specializing in IT services, Andrew Lucas London has long since moved into focusing on home technology for ultra high-end residences. The company has received accolades for its work from CEDIA, Lutron and ITSA. Now it has launched another service, an online quotation tool that allows homeowners to scope out their project and receive an instant smart home, VR room or home theater estimate.
The online quotation tool covers Andrew Lucas’ three main services: home theater, smart home and virtual reality. Users will be able to see how the installation cost could be divided into a monthly payment scheme, allowing them to pay for their home over a period of time instead of purchasing everything up front.
Homeowners looking to add home technology to their next building project will be able to access the quotation platform directly from the Andrew Lucas site, where they can instantly generate a customized estimate for their home theater, VR room or overall smart home for free.
“One of the main frustrations a typical smart home customer has is in understanding the ‘hidden’ costs that occur in a smart home project,” says Krystian Zajac, chairman and founder of Andrew Lucas London. “Our new quotation tool brings complete transparency to the quotation process, letting our customers understand exactly what costs are incurred by certain areas of the smart home and allowing them to tailor their property to suit their needs – and their budget.”
Home Theater
An Andrew Lucas home theater is designed to meet any client’s entertainment needs, whether they're a film aficionado seeking perfect quality or a parent looking for a space to relax and watch the latest Disney films with their kids.
Although the specific products cannot be disclosed, the company’s fully furnished home theater offering includes a professional projection system and screen (including 4K Ultra-HD projection system with HDR support options), acoustic treatment and 5.1, 7.1 or 3D audio speaker systems (including hidden speakers), AV receiver and universal remote as well as climate and lighting control.
The theater designs are created using virtual reality, giving the customer the opportunity to experience how it will look and feel and suggest any changes they might require.
“We will offer products from multiple manufacturers to suit the needs of the property owner,” says Zajac. He says once someone picks a package and gets the pricing, they can go ahead and purchase it.
“They will be able to pay a deposit and secure the order; in due course, we will also allow clients to pay for their smart home, home cinema or VR room with regular monthly payments over an agreed period,” says Zajac. “For home cinema we have three options on a sliding scale, based on price and functionality. All of these can be personalized with optional extras.”
All of the company’s smart homes, home cinemas and VR rooms are designed and installed by the Andrew Lucas team.
“For certain projects, we will also offer a virtual reality design service which lets our clients fully explore their project in VR and understand exactly what their smart home, home cinema or VR room will look like before installation begins,” says Zajac.
The company works with design professionals and property developers on many of its smart home projects, including a number of experts that can provide dedicated advice and support for design-focused enterprises wanting to incorporate smart home technology or virtual and augmented reality into their projects. Andrew Lucas London also offers RIBA-, BIID- and CEDIA-accredited CPDs for companies in Greater London.
Smart Home
For a smart home project, homeowners can input the basic details of their property and select up to three packages: security, comfort and entertainment. These can then be personalized with several technology upgrades, finishes and additional control interfaces, with a price estimate adjusting in real-time to show the price of equipment and projected extra costs such as labor, cabling and aftercare.
“We offer both wired or wireless options for smart home packages, each containing a number of ‘essential’ products,” says Zajac. “These are calculated to match the layout of the home.”
The packages include intruder alarms, smoke and leak detection, indoor/outdoor cameras, video doorbells, heating control, smart lighting, motorized shades, voice control integration, unified control, as well as multiroom audio/surround-sound audio, video distribution and streaming a outdoor speakers.
Each of the solutions is modular, so the customer can start with a single-feature system (e.g. smart heating control) or choose a whole-house set-up. Meanwhile, the company’s dedicated app allows users to manage their entire property from their phone, from lighting and shades to home entertainment and security systems.
Virtual Reality
The company also offers the service for virtual reality rooms — dedicated spaces for VR entertainment (think a home theater, but specifically for VR). These are fitted and installed by Andrew Lucas London. Meanwhile, Andrew Lucas Studios is the company’s VR and AR design consultancy service, which creates VR visualizations for design professionals and homeowners.
“This is also something we offer to other smart home installers that wish to provide visualizations of this sort to their own clients,” says Zajac.
The company’s VR room offering is described as a ‘wireless, backpack-based experience’ that includes high-end VR platforms and gaming PCs, as well as room-scale tracking technology, acoustic treatment, 3D audio speakers, plus, the virtual reality room can be fitted with extra technology to double up as a panic room.
This includes blast-proof doors, hidden cameras, a reserve power supply, a separate phone line and a biohazard protection system that monitors air quality and filters out hazardous substances via the ventilation system.
This new tool will be showcased to the general public for the first time at Ideal Home Show this week, which takes place from March 24-April 9 in London.
Visitors will be able to try the smart home tool on the stand and design their own projects from scratch, as well as being able to try a number of systems that Andrew Lucas regularly integrates into its smart home projects. Andrew Lucas will run two virtual reality demonstration areas.
“Virtual reality can be an incredibly useful tool for clarifying in the customer’s mind exactly what an architect or smart home specialist is hoping to achieve,” says Hamza Abbas, sales director at Andrew Lucas Studios. “A video flythrough or 3D render can offer a certain level of insight, but a VR experience is a much more realistic experience – with the added bonus of letting the prospective homeowner explore their property at a pace that suits them.”
This article orginally appeared on CE Pro Europe.
