With the downturn in new housing starts, custom integrators...

With the downturn in new housing starts, custom integrators and home system control companies are increasingly turning to commercial business to shore up sagging revenues. Elan Home Systems hopes that a recent $112,000 installation in a New Jersey restaurant leads to customer interest in home automation. The restaurant, Delicious Heights in Bedminster, has installed an Elan G home automation system for control of lighting, audio and video for 30 TVs, 50 speakers and digital signage that changes according to the restaurants revolving beer offerings. “The restaurant industry hasn’t changed in 200 hundred years in terms of what we offer customers in the front of the house,” the restaurant’s general manager, Marc Hudacsko, told us. “But the world is changing, and everybody has a smartphone now, he said. “Five times a day customers would ask me to charge their cell phones so we decided to install a power outlet with two USB ports in all booths for our customers.” The restaurant also offers free Wi-Fi and LED-backlit menus. Hudacsko uses an Elan control app to change volume for individual TVs and to flip channels when customers ask to watch a particular team. “I used to have to go to an equipment closet with all the cable and satellite boxes, find the right remote and then pull up the guide,” he said. Now Hudacsko pulls up the Elan app on his iPhone instead and changes volume and channels on the fly. Whether the technology will expand to a TV per table remains to be seen but is largely dependent on responding to consumer interest, Hudacsko said. “We don’t want to be ESPN Zone, but we'd have to look at what they want,” he said. The system was installed by 360 Media Innovations, Maplewood, N.J., where owner Chima Gale has installed two six-figure commercial projects this year in addition to the company’s standard residential load. Commercial projects give the added benefit of a service contract, “which we never get in residential,” Gale said. Business is now 60/40 between residential and commercial, he said. “I'd like it to stay that way,” he said. “It keeps us going.”