My name is Pete Cole and I am the founder of Lamorinda Smart Home. After working in the tech industry for more than two decades I decided to take a break at the end of 2019. Thanks to COVID that break kept getting longer and longer, and over the course of 2020 one of the many things that kept me busy was doing home improvement projects. I've always been fascinated by home automation and smart home technology in general, and that was the focus of many of my COVID projects.
I put in a Sonos audio system, installed a SmartThings hub, swapped out most switches and outlets to wifi or Z-wave, and installed a smart garage door opener and wifi irrigation controller. And all of the above is integrated with Amazon Alexa for voice control. I can turn on our TVs, indoor and outdoor lights, home theater, sprinkler system and much more with just a simple voice command. Oh, and when the combination of distance learning and the whole family at home 24/7 started melting down our wifi network, I put in an Eero mesh wifi system and switched from Xfinity to AT&T Gigabit fiber.
With a combination of the Echo Show in the kitchen and our Ring Doorbell we can see who's at the front door. When we're entertaining outside we just ask Alexa to "turn on party time" and all the back yard lights turn on and the Sonos system starts playing an Apple Music playlist on the outdoor speakers. When we're pulling in to our driveway our Tailwind smart garage door controller senses that we're there and automatically opens the garage door, and if we forget to close the garage door it will automatically close it if it's still open after 10pm. When we leave town we just ask Alexa to turn on vacation mode, which automatically turns a few lights on and off every evening to make it look like we're home. Our Rachio smart irrigation controller will automatically adjust the watering schedule if it rains.
After completing these projects, and with many more lined up, I started to contemplate turning my smart home obsession into a business. I found many online posts asking for referrals for these kinds of services, and it turns out there aren't many local companies purely dedicated to smart home technology. And most of the existing players only sell closed proprietary systems that, while sleek and shiny, are not able to keep up with the rapid innovation in the consumer smart home tech space. Not to mention the fact that these systems can cost $50k and up, and when something goes wrong the cost to repair or replace is equally astronomical. (I'm looking at you Savant and Control4). So I decided to take a very different approach with Lamorinda Smart Home. I take the most user-friendly, best-in-class smart home tech from well-known consumer technology companies and create customized, design-integrated, and easy-to-use systems for my clients.
If you're interested in exploring what smart home tech can do for you and your home, I'd love to help! You can reach me at 925.444.0672 or info@lamorindasmarthome.com. And here's a sample of the services we offer.
Thank you for your support!
Pete Cole
Lamorinda Smart Home
September 2020