Home theater automation, without four remotes
Nobody calls us because their speakers sound bad. They call because the system they paid for takes four remotes, two apps and a phone call to the person who installed it. The house guest can’t turn the TV on. The kids have given up. Half the system may as well not be there.
That’s a design failure, not a hardware one. And it’s the reason we took on AVA rather than just adding another brand to the price list.
New to the Space Coast
We picked AVA up at a trade show and became the first dealer for it in Brevard County. That matters less as a bragging right than as a practical one: if you want to see an AVA system running locally before you commit to it, there is currently one place to do that.
It also means we are early enough to have direct lines back to the manufacturer rather than going through three layers of support, which is worth something on a control system that has to keep working for years after we leave.
What a smart home control system actually does
A control system built around the remote instead of a rack. AVA OS runs on the Cinema Remote itself, on its own processor, so the remote is the brain. There’s no separate controller sitting in a closet that has to be bought, powered, cooled and eventually replaced.
It speaks IP, IR and CEC, which in practice means it talks to what you already own. Your TV, your receiver, your streamer, the cable box, the lighting, the shades, the thermostat.
The part people notice first is the Dynamic Keypad. The physical buttons relabel themselves depending on what you’re watching, so you only ever see the buttons that do something. And because AVA OS builds automations as sequences we set up in advance, one press can run the six steps that starting a movie used to take.
For a whole house, the Nano Brain lets several remotes work together and stay aware of what’s playing where, so the theater and the living room aren’t two separate islands.
Why we bring it into our own installs
We already build the parts underneath. Sonos audio through the house and out to the lanai. A UniFi network that doesn’t drop. A theater with the seating and sightlines worked out properly. Cameras you can actually pull up.
Every one of those is a good system on its own, and every one arrives with its own app. AVA is the layer that puts them behind one control surface, so the person living there deals with a remote instead of a collection of products.
The hardware is the easy part. The value is in the programming: getting the buttons to say what your household calls things, not what the manufacturer calls them. That’s our work, and it’s where the difference between a good install and a great one actually lives.
How it compares to Control4, Savant and Crestron
If you have been quoted for smart home automation in Brevard County, it was probably one of those three. They are capable platforms and for a large enough project they are still the right call. The difference is where the intelligence sits.
Control4, Savant and Crestron all put a processor in an equipment rack. Everything routes through it, it needs power and cooling, and it is one more thing that can fail years from now. AVA runs the same kind of control from the remote, which means less hardware, a lower entry cost and less to go wrong.
Where the traditional platforms still win is scale. Whole-estate lighting scenes, pool and irrigation, security integration, several racks across a property. If that is your project, we will say so and spec accordingly rather than forcing AVA into a job it was not built for.
When a control system isn’t worth it
If you have one TV and a soundbar, you don’t need this and we’ll tell you so. The TV remote is fine. Spending money on control for a two-device room is money that would do more somewhere else in the house.
At the other end, a very large estate running dozens of subsystems, extensive lighting scenes, pool and irrigation control and multiple equipment racks may be better served by a full control platform with a dedicated processor. AVA covers most high-end homes comfortably. It doesn’t cover everything, and we’d rather say that up front than sell you into a corner.
The honest test is how many things you touch to do one thing. If turning on a movie takes more than one action, control is worth discussing. If it doesn’t, it isn’t.
Conference room and boardroom control
The same problem shows up in conference rooms, usually worse. The person starting the meeting is a client or an executive, not the IT manager, and every minute spent working out which input to select happens in front of an audience.
One control surface, plain-language labels, one press to start the call. Nobody should need training to run a meeting in their own boardroom.
Common questions
See It Before You Buy It
The fastest way to understand AVA is to hold one. Book a demo and we'll show you what your own system would look like under one remote. Serving Melbourne, Suntree, Viera, Indialantic, Melbourne Beach and the rest of Brevard County.
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