Do you find yourself wondering how much easier it would be if you had a nanny to help you with the kids? There’s a solution that can offer support seven days a week, 24 hours a day without taking any sick days or vacations. Help comes in the form of smart home control. Every system in your Houston, Texas home—from security to entertainment—works hand in hand to create a more efficient household. Automated scenes, centralized control, and remote access are a few ways smart technology can help with your daily parenting tasks.

SEE MORE: The Beauty and Benefits of a Connected Home

Streamline Daily Routines with Pre-Set Scenes

Reduce the time it takes to go through your daily routines with the use of pre-set scenes in your smart home control system. For example, waking up the kids for school doesn’t have to be a chore. Create an automated scene that opens the shades, turns on the lights, and begins playing music in their room until they’re out of bed.

When it’s time to leave the house, you can focus on getting the kids into the car and making sure they have everything they need. Your smart home control system will take care of the rest. Press an ‘Away' scene as you leave that turns off all lights and appliances, locks the doors and arms your security alarm.

Installing a private home theater is all about enjoying the big-screen experience. Whether you’re watching a movie, your favorite TV show or the Astros, it all just feels a little different when it's shown on a 120” screen. As you’re looking for the best equipment for your brand new theater –from Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers to 4K Ultra HD projectors—it’s important that you don’t skimp when it comes to your screen. You also need to consider that bigger isn’t always better. Read on to see how you can find the right one to fit your room’s specifications.

SEE MORE: 5 Steps to Creating the Home Theater of Your Dreams

Figuring Out the Perfect Size
While one of the biggest advantages of a private home theater is having larger-than-life images, you need to be careful when choosing the size for your new screen. You want to go big, but there some things that will affect just how big you should go: your space limitations, seating distance, and your projector.

1. Space Limitations: These will likely have to do with height rather than width. You don’t want your screen to go all the way to the floor for a variety of reasons. For one, you may have a central speaker that needs to go under the screen. In bigger rooms, the row in front of you will impede the view of those in the back. It’s the same with the televisions in your home. They’re usually raised at least three feet off the ground for optimal viewing.

2. Seating Distance: You also want to take into account the length of the room. If you’re sitting too close to a large screen, the image may look pixelated, and you'll have to be moving your eyes constantly to take in the entire picture. A general rule of thumb is that for a 120" screen, you want to be at least 12 feet away.

Crestron has been the standard bearer of the home automation industry since its foundation in the 1970's. It excels at creating whole-home solutions that incorporate your lights, security, entertainment and more. For all your entertainment needs, it offers its DigitalMedia solutions. Crestron dealers must go through extensive training to become certified. What does this mean? It means they have the knowledge and experience to ensure success in all their projects.

SEE MORE: Why Working With a Trained Crestron Integrator Matters

What is DigitalMedia?

DigitalMedia is Crestron's standard 4K Ultra HD distribution system. As an official Crestron dealer with more than fifteen years of experience, Relative Home Systems can design a solution that takes into account the challenges that come with the digital era. Which means we have learned all the distribution specifications necessary to build a successful system in your home.

What is the DM 3.0 standard?

When you're building a network for a connected home, you need more than just an Ethernet cable connected to the wall. If you want to use your home networking system for smart control, smartphones, computers, and media streaming, you're going to need a lot more than that. You're going to need a comprehensive solution that offers strong, reliable coverage in every corner of your space.

How can you build that type of network? By finding the best equipment possible and installing it in a strategic way. Below we take a look at the components you should include in your system and how they affect your network's performance.

See More: Is Your Network Equipped to Handle a Connected Home?

Modems

In most instances, the first piece of hardware you need is a modem to convert analog signals to digital so your router can read the signals. It communicates directly to your internet service provider (ISP) to receive both your internet and cable signals. As opposed to their dial-up or DSL predecessors, most modems today are cable modems with coaxial connections. These modern variations can also serve as routers, which we will discuss in the following section.