Crestron Electronics is among the biggest names in the custom electronics industry, and the Rockleigh, N.J.-based company continues to expand the connected home possibilities for its dealers and their client base.
In recent months, Crestron has been particularly busy extending the reach of its Crestron Home portfolio by adding fully tunable LED light fixtures, battery-powered motorized shades, multizone streaming preamplifier, in-wall subwoofer, and power management products. Plus it continues to bolster its conferencing and work from home (WFH) capabilities as the company addresses both its residential and commercial/resimercial sides.
To provide some insights into the nonstop activity on the product development roadmap, Michael Short, director of marketing, Residential, at Crestron joined the CE Pro Podcast for this week’s episode.
“It has been an incredible year for us with regards to innovation and product development, and we’ve really come out with a ton of new products and solutions,” Short says, “but in reality it’s kind of business as usual for us. It’s what we’re built on here at Crestron – we always talk about us as a company where we like to pioneer, we’re innovators, so our north star is creating technology and aiming to improve the way people live at home and in the office.”
Short notes that the Crestron Home platform, launched a couple of years ago, has a premise of evolution. The operating system gives the company the opportunity to do updates every five-to-six weeks, Short says, to build on a forward trajectory of offering integrators and clients more from today’s smart home.
“And it feels quicker now, because of the fact that it’s based on software, and these additions can come quicker because we’re able to move faster and faster,” he says of the backend of Crestron Home.
At the same time, that nimble product development and engineering prowess can afford Crestron the ability to address market trends impacting the industry and the customer experience. That means influences such as the continuing need for improved home work and living balance spurred by COVID-19, wellness trend, home entertainment and such.
Seeking to provide customers a Crestron solution in every room, Short explains, the company analyzed its current portfolio and could see where it needed to augment solutions or fill in gaps around lighting, shading, audio and power management, for instance.
“Things like LED light fixtures we just launched – tunable lighting has been around for 10 years, so for us we needed to fill that part of our product catalog that didn’t exist but obviously not launch with something that is the norm and improve that,” Short says. “Following market trends is something we’re looking to do, as well as making the market.”
Between the tunable LED light fixtures and the battery-operated shades, Crestron dealers can also benefit from valuable discussions around health and wellness more now with their clients as well, Short notes. The company has made programming and controlling human-centric lighting a truly simple process for dealers via Crestron Home, along with other functionality to fine-tune lighting configurations.
Meanwhile, distributing audio remains a key subsystem within Crestron Home, and the company not only has new wares like the DM NAX 4-Zone Streaming Pre-Amplifier but it has enjoyed a partnership with architectural loudspeaker specialist Origin Acoustics to deliver loudspeakers and subwoofers.
Such Ultimate and Reference line products received a bottom-end boost with new Ultimate In-Wall Subwoofer. Short mentions how that partnership came about along with what integrators can expect from the new audio products.
Hear the entire conversation with Short as he discusses all of the new solutions in-depth as well as integrator feedback from the Crestron Next Tour by downloading or watching the podcast above. Find past episodes of the CE Pro Podcast by subscribing to the CE Pro YouTube channel or our Apple and Spotify podcast feeds.