The tiny house in Long Island City, Queens may have looked compact, but it hid a hefty amount of smart home technology inside courtesy of Control4. The smart home automation firm held a nationwide open house Thursday, June 13 a way to show home owners just how streamlined their lives could be with some hidden technology and splashy devices.

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The home, sitting in front of Kraus Hi-Tech Home Automation, featured many of Control4 favorites: its door station, motorized QMotion shades, a Samsung Frame TV, Yale smart lock and even an Amazon Echo all run through the Control4 interface.

Building a smart home can be as simple as buying a smart speaker, plugging it into the wall and downloading an app, training a voice assistant to know who you are. That approach is popular with 66.4 million adults in the U.S. now owning a smart speaker as of January 2019, up 40 percent from 2018, according to voicebot.ai.

Control4 focuses on integrated smart home integrationGearBrain

But Control4 isn't really aiming for the do-it-yourself crowd who wants to move cautiously into connected tech, one smart speaker at a time. Instead, its customer is fine with smart tech, as long as it works. Lights should come on when they walk through the room, and not necessarily be purple or violet or even lavender. Flashy isn't the goal — clean lines, and products that work seamlessly together is.

For example, Control 4 will play a part in the new building under development called The XI, two towers going up near the High Line area in New York, said David Mills, director of Kraus. Home owners who get the system will have all the controllers, servers and tech packed into a back area — the only thing a homeowner will need to do is operate a wall panel and a remote.

Not every smart home owner wants this kind of deluxe experience. Nor do they have the six figures it can cost to install everything as well. But the professional

installation route did draw a small crowd Thursday evening, and the tiny house was filled.

Check out The GearBrain, our smart home compatibility checker to see the other compatible products that work with Control4 platform.