iPad Apps for Multiroom Music and Whole-House Control
If you’ve been limiting your iPad usage to updating Facebook and/or titling your way through yet another round of Labyrinth, then you’re really missing the iBoat! Electronics manufacturers have embraced the iPad as a powerful touchpanel interface, especially those companies that were already riding the wave of automation and whole house control. With added processing power. a higher-resolution screen. and extra screen real estate to play with, the iPad has become the hottest control solution to hit the custom market in years. Here are a few apps that will turn your Pad into the ultimate touchscreen.
Crestron
How does a company that basically established, and has since ted the industry in, touchscreen-haled control deal with this new interloper? By welcoming it and going on to create the industry’s most popular app! According to Crestron,its Mobile Pro G iPad app is ranked the 31st overall top-grossing iPad app in the U.S. and is the only consumer electronics app to crack the top 100 (at press time). Once it’s installed. Mobile Pro G essentially makes the iPad a Crestron touch-panel. As with the company’s own touchpanels. Creston’s iPad app offers infinite customization possibilities, letting installers personalize each iPad for each project.
Price Mobile G is free and Mobile PRO G is $99
Savant
No company is as well positioned to take advantage of the iPad as Savant. That’s because its entire product line is OSX-based, so Savant engineers get to leverage their experience developing with Apple software. As Savant CEORobert Madonna put it, With Savant’s iPad App, you have an Apple machine talking to an Apple machine: Instead of just reworking its existing iPhone version, the company engineered its new Rosie 4i app specifically for the iPad. In addition to maximizing the potential of the large screen, it also utilizes the Pad’s elegant finger “swipe capability. The Savant Rosie 4i app features cool user adjustments like a changeable background that can display any stored photo. To further demonstrate its iPad commitment, Savant has created desktop and in-wall docks that allow users to position (and charge)their iPads.
Price: $10
Control4
Control4 has become a force to be reckoned within the automation world, and the new My Home for iPad app makes its system both more powerful and less expensive.By utilizing the full 9.7 inches of high-rez screen real. estate. Con-trol4′s app offers a superior control option to the company’s own7-inch touchscreen, which costs about twice as much as the iPad itself! The app offers direct access to all of your home’s sub-systems like righting, HVAC, multiroom audio, home theater, and security. And when My Home for iPad is updated to work with Con-trol4′s 4Sight remote-monitoring service later on this year, users will be able to control their home via the Internet from anywhere in the world! The app is free but requires the purchase of a separate mobile navigator license ($99) for each iPad.
Meridian Sooloos
The Meridian Sooloos iPad App allows users full control over their Sooloos music server to browse, manage, and play audio in multiple zones around their home. Meridian owners also get the ability to control their surround sound processors and DSP loudspeakers directly. The app takes full advantage of the iPad’s larger size and resolution by displaying more information on the screen at once than the company’s iPhone version. and it offers higher-quality artwork. User scan browse 35,000 Internet radio stations and all 8 million Rhapsody tracks, and they can create.edit, and load playlists of their favorite music from the comfort of, well, anywhere that they can get online.
Price: Free
Sonos
To say that Sonos is excited about its upcoming iPad app would bean understatement. According to a company spokesman, its new app “will be the coolest home controller on the iPad, period!” Scheduled for August release, Sonos Controller for iPad will take advantage of the device’s big glass footprint by presenting tons of information at once, and do so in portrait or landscape orientation. Without leaving the app’s main screen, a Sonos system owner can simultaneously display all available sources, browse the Music Library, check the Now Playing queue, and view the currently playing track plus volume level for each zone!
Price: Free
Maximum Apps
Crestron’s Mobile Pro G (top left) and Savant’s Rosie 4i (top right) home-control iPad apps make the most of the device’s screen real estate by providing access to a large range of control options on a single screen.A scrolling bar running along the screen’s bottom with Mobile Pro G, for example, enables you to quickly jump too ther sources or functions.With Rosie 4i, a range of functions are at your fingertips —everything from source selection and control to multiroom volume adjustment.
Bigger = Better
The Sonos Controller for iPhone was one slick A/V app, but it looks like the company’s upcoming iPad version (shown above) will be even better. The main change is the way the Sonos app makes use of the larger screen: Instead of jumping between several panels to access different functions, it now lays things out in one place. This lets you, for example, alter the music queue in the room you’re sitting in while simultaneously checking on what’s being played in other zones.
If you’ve been limiting your iPad usage to updating Facebook and/or titling your way through yet another round of Labyrinth, then you’re really missing the iBoat! Electronics manufacturers have embraced the iPad as a powerful touchpanel interface, especially those companies that were already riding the wave of automation and whole house control. With added processing power. a higher-resolution screen. and extra screen real estate to play with, the iPad has become the hottest control solution to hit the custom market in years. Here are a few apps that will turn your Pad into the ultimate touchscreen.
Crestron
How does a company that basically established, and has since ted the industry in, touchscreen-haled control deal with this new interloper? By welcoming it and going on to create the industry’s most popular app! According to Crestron,its Mobile Pro G iPad app is ranked the 31st overall top-grossing iPad app in the U.S. and is the only consumer electronics app to crack the top 100 (at press time). Once it’s installed. Mobile Pro G essentially makes the iPad a Crestron touch-panel. As with the company’s own touchpanels. Creston’s iPad app offers infinite customization possibilities, letting installers personalize each iPad for each project.
Price Mobile G is free and Mobile PRO G is $99
Savant
No company is as well positioned to take advantage of the iPad as Savant. That’s because its entire product line is OSX-based, so Savant engineers get to leverage their experience developing with Apple software. As Savant CEORobert Madonna put it, With Savant’s iPad App, you have an Apple machine talking to an Apple machine: Instead of just reworking its existing iPhone version, the company engineered its new Rosie 4i app specifically for the iPad. In addition to maximizing the potential of the large screen, it also utilizes the Pad’s elegant finger “swipe capability. The Savant Rosie 4i app features cool user adjustments like a changeable background that can display any stored photo. To further demonstrate its iPad commitment, Savant has created desktop and in-wall docks that allow users to position (and charge)their iPads.
Price: $10
Control4
Control4 has become a force to be reckoned within the automation world, and the new My Home for iPad app makes its system both more powerful and less expensive.By utilizing the full 9.7 inches of high-rez screen real. estate. Con-trol4′s app offers a superior control option to the company’s own7-inch touchscreen, which costs about twice as much as the iPad itself! The app offers direct access to all of your home’s sub-systems like righting, HVAC, multiroom audio, home theater, and security. And when My Home for iPad is updated to work with Con-trol4′s 4Sight remote-monitoring service later on this year, users will be able to control their home via the Internet from anywhere in the world! The app is free but requires the purchase of a separate mobile navigator license ($99) for each iPad.
Meridian Sooloos
The Meridian Sooloos iPad App allows users full control over their Sooloos music server to browse, manage, and play audio in multiple zones around their home. Meridian owners also get the ability to control their surround sound processors and DSP loudspeakers directly. The app takes full advantage of the iPad’s larger size and resolution by displaying more information on the screen at once than the company’s iPhone version. and it offers higher-quality artwork. User scan browse 35,000 Internet radio stations and all 8 million Rhapsody tracks, and they can create.edit, and load playlists of their favorite music from the comfort of, well, anywhere that they can get online.
Price: Free
Sonos
To say that Sonos is excited about its upcoming iPad app would bean understatement. According to a company spokesman, its new app “will be the coolest home controller on the iPad, period!” Scheduled for August release, Sonos Controller for iPad will take advantage of the device’s big glass footprint by presenting tons of information at once, and do so in portrait or landscape orientation. Without leaving the app’s main screen, a Sonos system owner can simultaneously display all available sources, browse the Music Library, check the Now Playing queue, and view the currently playing track plus volume level for each zone!
Price: Free
Maximum Apps
Crestron’s Mobile Pro G (top left) and Savant’s Rosie 4i (top right) home-control iPad apps make the most of the device’s screen real estate by providing access to a large range of control options on a single screen.A scrolling bar running along the screen’s bottom with Mobile Pro G, for example, enables you to quickly jump too ther sources or functions.With Rosie 4i, a range of functions are at your fingertips —everything from source selection and control to multiroom volume adjustment.
Bigger = Better
The Sonos Controller for iPhone was one slick A/V app, but it looks like the company’s upcoming iPad version (shown above) will be even better. The main change is the way the Sonos app makes use of the larger screen: Instead of jumping between several panels to access different functions, it now lays things out in one place. This lets you, for example, alter the music queue in the room you’re sitting in while simultaneously checking on what’s being played in other zones.
