Making a Dream Come Ture

When I first met this client, they were living in an upscale neighborhood in Northville Township. It was 2019 and we were hired to correct a protector alignment problem that was frustrating the client and making half of the screen blurry. Impressed with our work, they mentioned that they were planning to build a new house soon and promised to hire us for the network and AV work.

Two years later, they called and we met to review the first drafts of their architectural plans for an ultra-modern, 8,000sq ft house near nearby Maybury State Park. Getting hired to be part of the core design-build team allowed us to consultatively identify custom luxury amenities that would require close collaboration with the builder and interior designer, even advocating for the client when pushback would jeopardize their desired outcomes.

Two areas in particular were able to be addressed prior to groundbreaking. The client wanted a minimalistic interior design and understanding this meant no multi-gang light switches and all shades needed to be in ceiling pockets or part of the window frame. Getting these requirements factored in up-front saved on expensive re-work and change orders.

Later, as we finalized the design for the Great Room TV Feature Wall, we used Sonance Invisible speakers and subwoofer for a transparent surround sound environment. In addition, all control system touch panels would be inset so they were flush keeping in-line with the minimalism.

This custom luxury build took over a year for the construction alone, and we kept up with our work at every phase. From a control system perspective, the completed project scaled to 32 rooms and spaces, with a high-performance 10G wired infrastructure and pervasive wireless coverage inside and out. See the individual dropdowns below for a full list of all the features and amenities.

The Ubiquiti network consists of 72 wired ethernet ports connected to a 10G Aggregation Switch and a Dream SE Router with a 2.5gb WAN. Housed in the main full height rack in the basement and a small rack on the upper floor, these switches connect to 8 wireless access points located throughout the house and outdoors. All cabling is certified Cat6 and Cat6a.
To accomplish the clients minimalist lighting goals, all lighting circuits are housed in a lower and upper Lutron Homeworks electrical panels. Lutron Lighting Keypads were designed to go in each location dictated by functionality and code. The Lutron QSX processor communicates with all keypads and lighting modules using its rock-solid proprietary radio frequency. Lighting modules also interface with LED Tape drivers. This house has over 600ft of LED tape in ceilings, walls, cabinetry, stairways and feature walls. Lighting ‘scenes’ for bright primary lighting, feature and pathfinding lighting are carefully planned and labeled on each keypad. All Lutron lighting zones, devices and scenes are automatically made available to the URC Control System for inclusion to even high-level commands and functions.
Using the Ubiquiti NVR allows RAID protected local storage. Five G4 Bullet Cameras cover the exterior areas and are set-up for smart, state-of-the-art AI detection of humans, vehicles and animals and the Find-Anything app feature makes event retrieval a breeze.
Hi-Definition Music was a key requirement for the clients. The system we designed and implemented is a marriage of BluOS compatible products. We used a NAD CI 580 v2 music player that has four stream sources, allowing each member of the family their own favorites and playlists. For audio distribution, we are using two 8/16 channel 100W URC High-Definition Amplifiers (HDA). That’s 32 zones! These amazing amps use AV Bridging (AVB) over Ethernet for lossless, hi-res audio to 24-bit/192kHz. In addition to the music players, TV audio is captured at the source using POE powered HDA I/O modules and routed to the desired speaker zone or surround sound zone. With BluOS fully supported within the URC Control system, music and TV audio are tightly integrated.
The UCR MRX30 Advanced System Controller is the brained of the top-level control system. With two-way modules for music, lighting, cameras, shades, TV’s, surround sound, and much more it really brings all the pieces together into a very smart home.
We also integrated Alexa voice into all of the custom macros called scenes, allowing the client to say Good Morning and the shades open in the designated areas, the lights turn on to their preset levels, and their morning playlist plays in the designated zones.
On a more utilitarian side, the URC system monitors exhaust fans and temperature in the attic and already the client via text message if heat thresholds are exceeded or a fan motor fails.
All the URC In-Wall Touch Panels are Alexa enabled allowing voice control throughout the house.

We designed and integrated a complete solution for window shades and doorwall shades using Screen Innovations Nano Box Roller Shades. As this was a new construction project, we prewired for DC power and RS485 control using a single Cat6 cable for each shade motor. All shade power supplies and control are housed in a single structured wiring enclosure. The SI Troy controller allows direct integration with the URC Total Control System and also supports wireless control via its gateway.
The 20ft ceilings in the Great Room and Foyer are full window walls with a 22ft three part coupled shade for the upper windows and the lower Nana Wall doorwall. A Zen outdoor shade allows the Nana Wall to be opened bug-free.
Many of the roller shades are installed in custom designed ‘pockets’ in the ceiling to virtually hide them when they are in the up position.
Bedrooms and Bathrooms are using blackout privacy fabric that match the fabric used for light filtering elsewhere.
Following the same minimalist theme for the home theater design, we designed the lighting to complement the custom acoustic wall panels covered in light grey Guilford of Maine fabric. The projection screen is a 16:9 Screen Innovations Zero Edge 85% ALR Acoustically Transparent Slate Grey material. Behind the screen are the Dali Phantom M350 Left Center and Front Speakers. Also integrated on the front wall is a Sonance Invisible Subwoofer. Completing the surround sounds are Sonance Phantom M250 Surround and Rear Speakers and OSD Atmos Height Speakers. Audio Processing is managed by a Marantz Cinema 40 AVR and a Sonance DSP Amplifier for the subwoofer.
The most critical custom TV feature by far was the Great Room. The feature wall envisioned by the interior designer required that we drive the technology side of the design with proper drawings and clear communications to the trades involved. The as-built tolerances required an exact ½ inch gap around the Sony 85” Mini-Array LED TV that was mounted using a full-range articulating mount.
The Sonance Invisible Speakers were engineered to fit below the TV while the Sonance Invisible Subwoofer was engineering into the beveled wall.
All TV’s are from Sony except the Samsung Terrace for the outdoor TV lift.
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