Monitoring & support

Why monitoring matters more here than most places

A large share of the properties we look after sit empty for weeks at a time. A failed network switch in February is a minor annoyance if you are standing in the kitchen and a genuine problem if you are four time zones away and the cameras, the heating and the snowmelt controls all just went dark with it.

Remote monitoring watches the equipment continuously — processors, network hardware, recorders, access points — and alerts us when something drops. In most cases we can reboot, re-provision or re-establish a connection remotely before you are aware anything happened. When we can't, we know before you call, and we arrive with the right part.

24/7 support, not office hours

Front-line support is delivered through Parasol, a 24/7 remote support desk built specifically for the custom installation industry — founded by integrators, and now part of ADI. It means you can reach a trained technician by phone, text, email or chat at any hour, including weekends and holidays, rather than leaving a voicemail on a Saturday night.

Anything the desk cannot resolve escalates directly to us. The distinction that matters is that a support desk answers immediately and a small integrator sometimes cannot — and for a system running an entire house, the first ten minutes are the ones that count.

Taking over a system somebody else installed

We take on orphaned systems regularly. Integrators close, move away or simply stop responding, and the homeowner is left with a house full of equipment nobody can log into. It is one of the more common reasons people call us.

The process is straightforward. We survey what is physically there, recover or rebuild the programming and credentials, document the system properly, and give you an honest assessment of what is worth keeping and what has reached the end of its life. Plenty of older Control4 and Lutron hardware has years left in it — and some of it should have been replaced a while ago. You will get a straight answer either way.

Annual health checks

Once a year we go through the system properly: firmware and driver updates, battery replacement in shades and sensors, projector and display recalibration, network performance testing, camera focus and recording retention, and a review of the scenes and schedules against how the house is actually being used. Households change; a system programmed four years ago usually needs adjusting to match.