Control4 gets some looks

CONTROL4, a Utah firm with a home automation platform and more than 1 million ZigBee-enabled products shipped, is seeing increased interest from service providers in home networking and automation, but no major action as of yet.

“We talk to most of the big players on the cable TV carrier-type side and telecom,” said Eric Smith, co-founder and chief technology officer for Control4. “We are not in any huge discussions right now, although we did go way down the road with AT&T. Everyone is looking. There's not a single trade show they don't show up in our booth. We just haven't seen anyone ready to make the leap.”

Instead, Control4's home automation systems are initially sold as gear for controlling high-end home theater systems, Smith said. Control4 has more than 1600 independent dealers that sell and install its offerings, including regional retailers. That may be changing as interest grows in controlling home energy usage, Smith added.

“There hasn't been a killer app, but ‘green’ could be that killer app, if energy gets expensive enough,” he said.

Control4's system would enable consumers to do things such as automatically lower the thermostat and turn off lights when they arm their security system before leaving or set up home appliances and HVAC systems to run during off-peak hours, when energy may be less expensive. The system can even recommend changes based on energy usage, Smith said, such as replacing an old refrigerator with a newer, more energy-efficient one.

One potential business model is for utilities to subsidize deployment of home automation systems to drive down power usage and eliminate the need to build more power plants for higher peak usage or buy more power from power plants elsewhere, Smith said. It would also be possible for telecom service providers to offer that functionality, he added.