News

Welcome to Tomorrow: Lifeware Media Center Edition Unveiled at Infocomm; Integrated with Microsoft Media Center, Lifeware Automates NextGen "AVolution" Home (16/6/2005)

A new day has dawned in the world of home and office automation with the arrival of Lifeware - intelligent, standards-based software that operates in a hardware-neutral home or office environment. Lifeware can be experienced this week in the NextGen AVolution home at Infocomm 2005 in Las Vegas, where it is controlling hardware from six different companies.

Using the same remote control they use to access and enjoy digital entertainment on a Media Center PC, a Lifeware user can seamlessly control lighting, audio, window coverings, thermostats, security, and cameras. The convergence of media presentation requirements, computers and refined control of devices makes Lifeware an ideal fit for corporate boardrooms, where control must be at once refined, elegant and graceful.

Lifeware represents the convergence of digital entertainment and refined home and office control.

"We enhance the idea of convergence by bringing home control into the digital entertainment experience," said Seale Moorer, a founding partner of Columbus-based Exceptional Innovation, developers of Lifeware. "The way we do it, with an open product based on Web Services, is a new, exciting and intelligent way to approach automation."

It is an approach that makes Lifeware hardware-neutral as well. By embracing a standards-based, open architecture leveraging Web Services for Devices, Lifeware provides unprecedented flexibility to automation dealers and customers.

In the NextGen AVolution home at InfoComm, Lifeware can be found controlling a Lutron HomeWorks lighting system, Aprilaire thermostats, a GE NetworX security system, a Netstreams DigiLinx whole-house audio system, Z-wave lighting products and Panasonic cameras. The system also supports products by Honeywell, OnQ, Vantage, Russound, Vaux, Axis, and RCS, with more compatibility announcements in the works, according to Mike Seamons, Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

"We have invested heavily in a robust software architecture that allows us to support a wide range of products from so many different companies with minimal effort for our dealer integrators," Seamons said.

Twenty six participants in the Lifeware Early Adopter program recently completed training at the company's headquarters, which features a state-of-the-art 2,000-square foot smart house. Seamons said full scale dealer rollout is set for August, with eight training sessions slated that are filling up quickly.

www.exceptionalinnovation.com