Crestron Adds Wired Lighting, Cameras, Cresnet Devices to Pyng Home Automation Family

Crestron continues to strengthen up the year-old Pyng home automation environment it launched last year. At the recent CEDIA Expo 2015 we saw a heap of new products added to the ecosystem including standard ONVIF-compatible IP cameras, Crestron’s hardwired lighting controls and Cresnet wired devices such as keypads, thermostats, sensors and motorized shades. Say what? Exactly, sounds techy but all good stuff.

Now these products can be installed, integrated and configured using nothing more than an iPad. Furthermore, you the customer can create your own scenes and schedules and otherwise personalize your systems without having to call (and pay for) a programmer.

Crestron wowed integrators last year with the launch of Pyng which defied three decades of industry convention. Those were the days of pricey programmers driving up system costs and complexity, and customers being unable to make even the simplest changes to their systems without annoying and pricey visits from their integrators.

The original $599 Pyng hub and cloud-based SHaaS (smart home as a service) was a great start to a new pattern. But it was just that: a start in what will become a complete and universal shift to a new Crestron framework.

Pyng Baked into Everything

At launch, Pyng applied to just a handful of subsystems: Crestron’s own wireless lighting, motorized shades, thermostats and other infiNET EX devices such as sensors and I/O modules. It also worked with Yale locks and Honeywell Vista security panels.

Earlier this year Crestron added audio to the mix, supporting its own players as well as Autonomic’s Mirage music servers.

“Dealers liked Pyng so much, they were asking, ‘Why can’t you do this for everything?’” says Nick Harris, Crestron’s new VP marketing appointed in July of this year. “Now Pyng is baked into more Crestron products, and the concept is to bake it into everything.”

At Cedia Expo 2015 we’ll see a major expansion of supported systems—spanning more than 300 SKUs—including one of the most asked-for categories: hardwired lighting control.

One big Crestron dealer told me recently he wasn’t interested in Pyng unless it supported Crestron’s centralized lighting control system. Well, here it is.

In addition, Pyng technology will grace other wired Cresnet- and Ethernet-communicating subsystems including motorized shades, thermostats and keypads ... and industry-standard ONVIF IP cameras, of which there are hundreds.

The wired ecosystem also includes Crestron’s DIN rail-mounted solutions, which bodes well for the EMEA market.

“That alone is huge,” says Jeff Singer, international marketing manager for Crestron. “It opens up the whole international market.”

New third-party locks and security panels also are expected to join the Pyng family soon enough, but Crestron was not ready to speak in detail about those categories. Ditto on DigitalMedia, the outrageously popular video-switching line. We do know it’s on the roadmap.

Eventually, everything about Crestron will be Pyng, from the devices to the cloud service to the programming environment to the user experience.

“It’s not just for smaller homes with a few wireless dimmers and switches,” Harris says. “It’s now built into wired devices for large-scale, commercial-grade installations.”

There’s more. Pyng now supports a brand new wireless fan controller that Crestron will introduce at CEDIA.

“We never had wireless fan controls,” says Singer. “It’s a whole new category for Crestron.”

Pyng is for Everyone

Many integrators seem to think that Pyng is a limited new product line for consumers who can’t afford a “real” Crestron system. But Pyng is a “real” Crestron system.

The largest, most complicated Crestron systems out there still benefit from Pyng. Simply adding a $599 Pyng hub to any system enables dealers to install and configure supported subsystems fast and then port those settings automatically to a full-blown Crestron system.

With Pyng in the mix, you can personalize your system, where supported subsystems are concerned.

Who wouldn’t want that – dealer or client—even in a six-figure install?

But, yes, Pyng does throw the doors wide open to a new customer base that would never consider Crestron in the past, either for its locked-down environment or its expensive hardware and service.

It is that capability that makes many dealers believe Pyng is a step-down product or platform. It’s not.

“It’s still a luxury brand,” says Harris “Pyng is just the technology that makes it easier to implement and deliver Crestron solutions.”

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