Are you considering a home automation upgrade for your Brookhaven home? At this time of year, you'll undoubtedly see many new devices come to market and some excellent holiday deals. It's tempting to go the DIY route, but is that the right approach for you? A little soul searching might be in order to better understand your smart home needs. 

As a smart home company serving the metro Atlanta area for over 30 years, we have a solid understanding of both sides of the equation. Our 20,000 square-foot showroom is open to the public, and while we specialize in custom installation, you can just buy equipment from GHT Group. But when it comes to smart home technology, it pays to take a long term, strategic approach, so your investment serves you well for years. To give you an example of how GHT Group sweats the details, consider the typical issues below that we frequently encounter in smart home projects.  

SEE ALSO: The 3 Things to Look for in a Smart Home Company

Fall is here, and the holidays will soon be upon us. With the holidays, there will be shopping, packages, and visitors. Family and friends will be welcomed, but there might be unwanted visitors. From the potential for porch piracy to the pesky solicitations you don’t need, you might want a way to sift through all that in the busy holiday season.

That’s where the new Control4 Chime video doorbell comes in. While there’s no shortage of video doorbell options these days, the Chime is the only one that can harness all the power of Control4’s advanced OS 3 home automation system. Let’s take a closer look at the Chime and how it can make for a safer and more productive holiday season in Alpharetta, GA.

We love motorized shades, and we wonder how anyone can get along without them. Although “shades” might be the name most often associated with the motorized variety, you could attach most other window treatment terms to motorized (or powered, if you prefer) um, shades.

The most popular motorized shades are roller types, but one company goes way beyond those. Lutron is a world leader in lighting control as well as powered window treatments. Lutron’s mission is all about managing and controlling light, and regulating natural light is a big part of that.

If you didn’t know there were so many possibilities with Lutron shades for your Buckhead, GA home, you should definitely read the rest of this blog!

We’ve talked plenty in our blog about how lighting control and smart home automation makes your life easier, more convenient, and even safer. But how about a dose of some good old fashioned fun?  

Halloween is right around the corner, and while it's fun for the kids, consuming that much candy may not be conducive to good health in adults. However, we do have our toys – tools like Lutron lighting control to make our house the scariest on the block. So, besides all the convenience and efficiency that lighting control can bring to your Buckhead, GA home, let’s explore the fun side for Halloween!

We're all still making adjustments to our lifestyle with the ongoing pandemic. And while some schools and workplaces are back in operation, suffice it to say that everything is not back exactly the way it was before.

During this timeframe, we have leaned heavily on technology for work, education, entertainment, and even fitness. We’re not here to claim technology is a substitute for in-person interaction. Still, as a longtime home technology integrator, we are here to make it as easy and seamless as possible to enable you to do all that you want to accomplish.

While everyone is working on desktops, laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks, we think there's an opportunity to leverage existing AV setups in your home for more flexible and engaging work, learning, and socializing. It’s easy to do, especially if you employ Crestron Home smart automation in your Roswell, GA home. Let's explore some scenarios below that you may not have thought about. 

As a purveyor and custom integrator of home technology systems and solutions, GHT Group sees many clients at different stages of their journey into smart home technology in Georgia. While home automation has a host of benefits in convenience, luxury, and efficiency, we see a couple of areas that tend to draw people in. 

The first area is smart lighting. It's fairly easy to see the benefits, from effortless control to energy efficiency. The other is whole-home audio. Whole-home audio not only brings music seamlessly to every corner of your Alpharetta property, it's also a gateway to adding more layers of smart home features. Keep reading to see how.

Yes, the pandemic is still with us, and as tiring as it may be, maintaining health and safety habits will go a long way to ensure its tenure in Georgia will last no longer than necessary. One of those healthy habits – in any environment and time – is to keep hands clean and oft-used surfaces germ-free.

Light switches and controls are a high-touch area that likely few think of as potential sources of germs. No, you don't necessarily need to remove them or cover them up with tape. Fortunately, Lutron lighting control solutions provide multiple ways of controlling your lights that involve touching nothing at all. Now there’s a high-tech approach to keeping your Sandy Springs home a little safer for you and your family in these challenging times. Keep reading for three simple ways to make managing your lighting touch-free.

If you're selling your home in Alpharetta, you might be faced with some expenses for either bringing deferred maintenance up to date or needing to update some items to make your property look fresh. It might be refinishing wood flooring, replacing carpeting, painting inside or out, or renewing bathroom and kitchen faucets. Depending on the age of the house and the competition, it might even be more extensive than that.

Most recent surveys show that prospective homebuyers are increasingly looking for smart home features in homes. And in new construction, builders have increasingly responded by prewiring homes for smart lighting, whole-home audio and other popular features.

If the prospect of modernizing your home with smart technology seems daunting, GHT Group can make it easy. In business serving the metro Atlanta area for over 30 years, we are your go-to smart home company for home technology. Keep reading below for three ways to freshen your home with smart tech and add the wow factor to bring in offers fast!

SEE ALSO: Does Your Smart Home Company Do These Things?

With the challenges of the pandemic still with us, working and schooling from home will be a continuing reality for the better part of 2020 in many areas. Major tech companies like Google have already announced they will continue work-from-home policies into 2021. Educational institutions at all levels are also grappling with how to resume classes, and many will adopt remote approaches in the short term. 

In this environment, communicating effectively from home has become critical. Communication is not just for work and school; maintaining social contacts with family and friends is also needed to not feel isolated.

Crestron has thought about this, too. A worldwide leader in enterprise video conferencing, audio-visual, and commercial automation, the company is bringing that expertise to improve communication and collaboration from home. Of course, Crestron is also a leader in smart home automation, so it couldn’t be a more perfect fit.

Keep reading to learn more about Crestron's new HomeTime, which brings together sophisticated video conferencing, communication, and home control to your Atlanta residence.

Many people approach the idea of making their home "smart" differently. For years, our industry thrived on simplifying the control of AV equipment. That may not be the first thing you think of these days when it comes to smart tech, but it is still very much integral to the smart home experience. For others, it might be automated lighting and climate control, as those are also uber-popular do-it-yourself smart home products.

Still, others might place more importance on home security, as smart sensors, cameras, and locks offer more ways to keep an eye on the homestead and maintain safety. And there’s more, like automated pool equipment, irrigation systems, and other devices you can turn on or off or control their behavior.

The one thing you want to do when starting with smart home technology is to choose a system that can grow with you and accommodate a wide range of devices and skills to make home control effortless. For many Buckhead, GA homes, the right system that ticks all the boxes is Control4. Keep reading to learn why Control4 is the centerpiece of your smart home, no matter which feature is the most important to you.

If our clever title has you lamenting the end of summer in Georgia, we did not skip the season by Springing into Fall. Indeed, please read all about enjoying summer fun with outdoor entertainment technology. But as you read this, you are quite likely wondering what might be happening with school schedules this fall, given the ongoing pandemic.  

As your local smart home company in the Atlanta area, we can offer you some innovative ways to have smart technology make the new home routines for work, play, and fun a little more manageable, and, dare we say…fun! Not only that, but we can also show you this tech in action at our 20,000 square foot showroom in Marietta. Keep reading for some ideas that may spark your imagination. 

SEE ALSO: The Three Things to Look for in a Smart Home Company

We’ve dedicated a lot of virtual ink on these pages to the wonders of home automation. From audio and video systems that almost run themselves, to lighting, motorized shading, climate control, and security, home automation systems like Control4 make everything in your Johns Creek, GA home run like a finely tuned machine. We may also have referred to it as an orchestra, but we think you understand the idea.

Having done many smart home projects over the years, we're always amazed at our clients' imagination when it comes to automation for their homes. If it is technically possible, we'll strive to make our clients’ automation dreams a reality.

With that in mind, we'd like to tell you about a few more things you can automate with a Control4 smart home system. Keep reading!

To paraphrase a common refrain on airline flights, "we know you have many choices in home automation systems, and we're glad you chose us." True, there are many choices in smart home automation. There is an almost bewildering array of options in consumer automation devices and platforms, tied together by software and devices from Google, Amazon, Apple, and Samsung.

But when it comes to managing larger, more sophisticated homes, the choices narrow down further and quickly. Sure, you can use parts of excellent consumer products like Google's Nest ecosystem to manage some functions of your home. You can run your own email server at home, too. But few people operate their own email servers because they have to be quite technically savvy to keep them running correctly. And while consumer home automation is far more accessible, the more you do with it, the more complicated it gets. And there are some things that these systems won't do without a great deal of advanced hacking.

There is a more straightforward way. You can call GHT Group to design and build a customized home automation solution that works exactly the way you want in your Johns Creek, GA home, with no tech support required from you. And if your property is quite large and there are many things to manage – we would likely recommend a Crestron solution, as there are few limits as to what it can do. Read on to learn more about three ways Crestron systems are a different breed of automation solution.

Lighting is a crucial element in designing your ideal home environment. You probably have lights all around your home, but how customized are they? Do they add convenience to your day-to-day routine and allow you to create ambiances with the touch of a button?

Installing a Ketra tunable lighting system in your Alpharetta, GA, home can give you all the above benefits and more. Here are three ways Ketra lighting can help you achieve the perfect lighting.

SEE ALSO: GHT Group Adds Home Lighting Design Services

Note: More than a year after we originally drafted this blog, voice control has taken an even more prominent role in today’s smart homes. Clients rely on voice control technology to search for information or ask their home assistants to perform certain actions. For example, maybe you’re cooking and want to brighten the lights, but your hands are busy. Just ask your virtual assistant for help, and you’ll notice the room brighten in seconds. However, in the past, you had to mind your diction and use exactly the right words for your assistant or voice control app to understand you.

But that’s not how humans speak on a regular basis. Sometimes we jumble words, ask something in a more obtuse manner, or simply speak with an accent. Your voice control should be built to accommodate that. Josh.ai revolutionized the industry by creating the first home assistant with natural language processing capabilities. Keep reading to see how that function works in real life and why we highly recommend Josh.ai voice controlled home automation for your Alpharetta or Metro Atlanta residence.