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The Future Is Now

slide10The Jetsons may have had a robotic housekeeper and a flying car, but today’s home technology is not far behind. From a shower where you can pre-set water temperature and volume of flow to a refrigerator that tells you when to discard the milk to a whole-house audio system, you can control your entire living environment with an iPhone and control panel.
Mike Brody, co-owner of Crescendo Designs in Southampton recently visited CEDIA Expo, the leading home technology trade show where all sorts of futuristic platforms were exhibited — most,
alas — not quite ready yet for prime time. But not to worry, Hamptons’ homeowners, he says, are often the “guinea pigs” for cutting-edge manufacturers once their new technology gets off the drawing board. What’s the latest, we asked him? Soon homeowners will be able to create their own “scenes,” in which they digitally dictate a series of instructions that are then carried out. Let’s say you’ve just come home from work, or arrived at your weekend house. With the push of only one button the house temperature will immediately set to your preference, your lights will create just the ambience you want, the curtains will open or close. In the past you would have had to call Brody or another home installation pro to create that “scene.” Now, or at least very soon, you will be able to control your own scenarios. Having a dinner party? Set your scene in advance: Frank Sinatra to start crooning during cocktails, the lights to dim as your guests sit at the table. Alas, you will have to light your own candles.

Who knew that the room where we perform our ablutions is also a high-tech sanctum where the push of a button can draw motorized shades, turn on a TV to the latest episode of The Good Wife, and
pipe in your music of choice. Today’s modern bathroom sports TV screens set into mirrors so that the master of the house need not miss the latest stock updates while shaving. The Hydra TV, by Séura is
a waterproof device that allows you to follow Masterpiece Theater while ensconced in bubbles. As for music, there are devices aplenty such as the Moxie showerhead, that enable you to sing (or dance) in the shower along with Pharrell.

The high-tech bathroom is also a place to bathe other senses. Kohler produces a ceiling panel with LED nodes that can produce over 16-million color combinations to put on light shows to rival Hayden
Planetarium. The Vedana by Bain Ultra creates a spa experience by using light therapy to do such things as regulate the production of serotonin. Toilets today are as accommodating as a geisha. When the Numi senses your approach it opens the lid, turns on music, heats up foot and seat warmers, and its bidet sanitizes and dries your privates. For the super lazy or germaphobes touchless faucets are not just a staple of airport sinks. For fitness buffs, there are many brands of scale that measure not only your weight but also body fat and muscle mass.

You may be smarter than a fifth grader, but are you as smart as your kitchen appliances? Not only can you turn your stove on while driving home, but a cooktop by Gaggenau doesn’t limit your pots to
burners – you can use the entire surface to cook on. In case you get confused, a pan recognition feature “remembers” which pot is cooking at which temperature. For those who feel the need for speed, an induction cooktop by Electrolux boils water in 90 seconds. And you thought they only made vacuum cleaners. A GE refrigerator features a filtration system that removes 98 percent of five trace pharmaceuticals (including – eek! — ibuprofen and progesterone) that can be found in tap water.

As for the Jetsons’s flying cars, an aerospace firm is designing an
automobile that takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane. Keep
your eyes on the skies in 2015.

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