UNDER CONTROL
Norman builder loads model home with voice activation
Dan Reeves cleared his throat and ordered, “Alexa, good night.”
“Good night, sleep tight,” replied Amazon’s home assistant from a screen by the bed.
Then the lights blinked out, and shades lowered on the nearby windows with a quiet whir. Moments later, the soothing sounds of ocean waves washed through the room.
Reeves spoke again: “Alexa, good morning.”
“What’s up, early bird?” the assistant replied, its voice slightly stilted. ”It’s time to go get that worm.”
As the shades rose, Alexa ran through current weather conditions and the day’s forecast, then flipped on a favored radio station.
“That makes for some easy living,” observed Reeves, owner and president of Landmark Fine Homes in Norman.
Landmark Fine Homes’ model at 741 Villaverde Drive already has plenty going for it. The 3,161-square-foot home features four bedrooms, three baths and an open floor plan that makes the most of natural light.
It’s in the Montoro Ridge neighborhood, on the south side of Tecumseh Road west of 12th Avenue NE, an area that’s seeing rapid growth. But it’s also a concept home showcasing high-tech wonders that can be initiated by voice command.
“The neat thing about this concept home is it really is designed for the busy lifestyle,” Reeves said. “It is the family who has kids, who have a lot of things going on, who can get your own personal assistant to help you with voice activation.”
What kind of help? Help like this, as Reeves boasts at www. landmarkfinehomes.com: “Turn on the lights.” “Preheat the oven to 350.”
“Please start the coffee.” “I need a recipe for chicken.”
The model home will be on several home tours, including the Builders Association of South Central Oklahoma’s upcoming Festival of Homes on June 1-3 and June 8-10.
It’s also open from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Mondays or by appointment.
At your beck and call
Assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home are gaining popularity, and so are the household items they communicate with, such as automated floor sweeps and household security cameras.
Reeves took in the breadth and scope of the technology earlier this year at the International Builders Show in Orlando, Florida. Landmark, he decided, needed to build a concept home incorporating the technological wonders.
He put Kaitlin Scorsone, his daughter and Landmark’s director of design and special projects, on the case. She put together a team that not only curated the voice-activated technology for the concept house, but researched the best ways to incorporate it.
The result is a home where so much is at your beck and call — the lights, the sprinklers in the yard, the kitchen appliances and the many cameras deployed throughout the house.
“The great thing about the cameras is that there’s an app you can look on,” said Donna Thompson, Landmark’s director of marketing. “So if you’re at work, you can pull it up there (on a phone) and check out all the cameras.”
A user also can open and close the garage door from afar, lock and unlock the doors, and answer the doorbell, using video access to talk to whoever rings it — and even clean the floors and heat up water for coffee.
In all, Landmark has incorporated about 60 voice-activated or remotely controlled features in the home. All run through Alexa via a host of third-party apps such as Geneva, which controls the home’s GE kitchen appliances.
Shift toward ‘smart home’
This kind of “smart home” or “connected home” concept is gaining steam, so much so that the Consumer Electronics Show is seeing more home gadgets in its lineup, and high tech is edging closer to center stage at the International Builders Show.
The shift has been pronounced enough to prompt Kleber & Associates, a building products marketing firm, to wonder if the electronics show is moving in on territory once claimed by the annual builders’ show and Kitchen & Bath Industry Show.
“Historically, CES has been about gadgets and devices, as big-name electronics brands unveil their latest whiz-bang smartphones, tablets, televisions and other entertainment products,” the company noted in its blog in January. “But over the last few years, home products have begun to take up more floor space at the show.”
Evidence of that shift can be found in the kitchen on Villaverde Drive.
“Alexa, ask Geneva to heat water for me,” called Houston Sneed, Landmark’s construction manager.
“You’d like me to heat water using your refrigerator for K (Keurig) cup to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Right?” Alexa confirmed. “Yes,” Sneed said. Moments later, gurgling came from the single-cup coffee maker installed by the water dispenser in the refrigerator door.
This is Landmark’s fifth concept home.
The first, built in 2009, incorporated the latest in green building. Next was a home featuring iPadcontrolled technology. Then a partnership with Oklahoma Natural Gas to showcase natural gas products. Then a gated neighborhood of homes big on amenities but on a smaller carbon footprint.
Learning homebuyers’ tastes, and homebuilding possibilities, is ongoing, he said.
“It’s like anything, the more you learn, the more you don’t know,” Reeves said. “There’s just so much technology that can be added to homes. There’s just some really neat features — the home functions better and saves you money, all while making it safer.”