CORRAL THE HOLIDAY CHAOS WITH CRESTRON HOME OS 4

Were last year’s holiday parties at your home a bit chaotic, due to the size of your home and the number of out-of-town guests present?

The Crestron Home OS 4 update (due to be released in December 2023) can corral that chaos for you, thanks to the inclusion of a whole-home paging feature (which includes chimes).  Once this latest update has been downloaded to your Crestron Home platform, you can use it to keep the chaos at a manageable level by using a Crestron touchscreen to make announcements throughout your spacious home across your whole-home speaker system, whether you need to summon your guests to the formal dining room for dinner, or to gather everyone in the Great Room for holiday games and gift-giving.  Any music playing over the speakers will be automatically and temporarily ducked until the completion of the announcement.

And since the paging system will be configured into zones, you will also be able to make announcements exclusively to a specific group of rooms. So awakening everyone asleep in the upstairs south wing of your home in time to hustle down to the breakfast nook for hot chocolate, coffee, and a hearty meal of bacon, eggs, and cinnamon streusel pancakes will be as easy as initiating an announcement from a Crestron touchscreen located anywhere in your home.

And let’s imagine that you have a special treat planned for all your guests for the early evening on Christmas Eve: a trip to downtown Huntsville for a stroll through Tinsel Trail and ice skating at the Huntsville Museum of Art’s ever-popular “Skating in the Park.”  Last year, your one choice for summoning everyone downstairs to the vans for departure at 3 P.M. was through text messaging.  That worked well enough, but there were still a few families who missed their ride because they couldn't locate their young children quickly enough.  This year, you can issue multiple reminders across the paging system so that any children who aren’t currently with their parents hear the announcements and make their way back to Mom and Dad in plenty of time for boarding.

In the same way, Crestron paging could be used for a variety of purposes when your home is overflowing with guests, such as:  

• Providing directions to bathrooms
• Locating lost children, grandparents, or pets
• Emergency evacuation directions
• Locating a doctor in the house
• Summoning guests to the theater for the annual showing of traditional holiday movies, such as “Home Alone,” “A Christmas Story,” or “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”
• Summoning sports fans to the sports bar for the big game
• Simply any purpose you can imagine

Got questions?  AV Enthusiast has the answers! 

Please call us at 256-882-5081. 

The AV Enthusiast showroom is located at 514 Madison Street in Huntsville, Alabama.  Our office hours are Monday – Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM and Saturday from 10 AM to 3 PM.