Dubai’s first ”smart home” comes to life

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DAMAC Properties launched Tuesday the Middle East’s first luxurious fully automated ‘smart home’ show apartment at the company’s Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) sales office.

A collaborative effort between DAMAC Properties and OMC Smart House Technologies Middle East, the leading Australian automation and smart home company, resulted in the construction of a modern smart living environment which sets a new benchmark of convenience and comfortable enjoyment in the Middle East property market.

The show flat also offers customers a choice of enhancement options. Standard as well as enhanced bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens are displayed within the apartment.

An upgraded bedroom includes parquet flooring with marble borders and cupboards with exclusive wenge wood finishing, while the enhanced kitchen is modern looking with state of the art equipment and the bathroom offers customers the option to include a fitted Jacuzzi.

“Home owners need practical solutions that simplify their day-to-day lives. We are accordingly giving our customers the freedom to choose between a standard apartment, and a flat that includes extra luxury components. We have also partnered with OMC to provide our customers with the most practical and user-friendly smart home technology available on the regional market,” said Peter Riddoch, CEO at DAMAC Properties.

Riddoch added: “As luxury lifestyle providers, we believe in delivering apartments that provide our customers with an extremely comfortable environment. The smart technology that we shall install in select properties will allow for the easiest and most efficient means of using home appliances.”

“By leading the way for developers to deliver smart solutions as standard fixtures, DAMAC Properties are catering to buyers’ increasing demand for properties with home automation which adds convenience, security, and energy efficiency to the property. Ultimately, the added property value offered by home automation is driving more mainstream property development projects to adopt the smart home system concept,” stated David Dobouny, Managing Director of OMC Smart House Technologies Middle East.

OMC’s comprehensive knowledge and understanding of world class home automation products enabled them to design a practical smart home system that met DAMAC’s requirements and needs.

The DAMAC smart home features on display stand out for their special functions that are designed to address individual owners’ needs.  The central feature of the DAMAC smart home is the centralised OMC touch screen, chosen for its aesthetics, reliability and performance. The smart home’s multiple integrated systems, underpinned by structured cabling, are easily controlled by the OMC 15 inch LCD wall-mounted colour touch screen. The touch screen acts as a smart interface with user-friendly software that allows simplified control of climate, lighting, entertainment, irrigation, blinds/curtains and security cameras etc at the simple touch of an icon.

DAMAC’s show apartment includes a centralised sound server and multi-room audio & video system.  Music files are stored on the sound server, allowing music to be played throughout the apartment via subtle in-ceiling speakers.  Music files are viewed and selected from AV wall mounted keypads.  A central set top box allows distributed video to be viewed on all TV’s, plasma’s, and LCD monitors in the apartment.  Also, a local input point enables MP3 players, i-pods or laptops to play music through the speakers in that room.

Another exciting smart home innovation on display at DAMAC is for homeowners to connect to their homes remotely via the Internet and control and view their homes, including lights, A/C, cameras and blinds etc.  From any PC, smart phone or PDA you can interact with your DAMAC home from anywhere in the world.