The smart way to make life easy: C-bus

A new build in Christchurch is the smartest on the street thanks to C-Bus home automation from Schneider Electric

Life today is about making things simpler – so why not have a home that makes life easier for you? For two Christchurch home owners, C-Bus home automation from Schneider Electric has done just that.

The couple’s newly built home integrates indoor and outdoor lighting, AV, blinds, outdoor louvres, alarms, security gates and the garage door all in a single easy to use system installed by local integration experts Sosimo, using Schneider Electric automation platform C-Bus.

C-Bus makes managing your home a breeze: a single button push can raise all the blinds without having to go room to room or set the scene for entertaining by lighting the dining table, spotlighting the garden and turning on the music.

Life made simple

The homeowners say they’d never experienced a C-Bus system before, but now can’t imagine being without it and are delighted with how easy it is to use.

Made specifically for the New Zealand and Australian markets, C-Bus is Schneider Electric’s centralised wiring system that brings together stand-alone elements in a house and lets you control them from one system.

“A lot of people don’t know what’s possible,” says Brett Harvey of Sosimo. “If you think of a standard home then you’re going to put in heat pumps and security, and you’re going to have audio visual and lighting. C-Bus brings all those services together to make it far more seamless for the homeowners to use them.”

With C-Bus, you can also create ‘scenes’ that suit your lifestyle, by combining different services for different situations.

One of the couple’s favourite features is ‘shower mode’, in which their towel rails are set to run for just a few hours in the morning and a single button push turns on the bathroom lights, activates the fan and heats the mirror.

Streamlined and easy

There are no extra remotes with C-Bus: the homeowners can use wall switches, an iPad, or simply pick up their phones to play music throughout the house, control the TV or turn on the heat pump.

The wall switches are light-switch sized, but instead of busy banks of buttons, they have a screen that offers up to 16 functions. They also come in a range of stylish finishes, like Schneider Electric’s popular Saturn Zen.

“It creates much cleaner lines in a home,” says Brett. “For the homeowners, without C-Bus they would have needed about 21 switches along the kitchen wall to control all the services within that space.”

Life with C-Bus

C-Bus is driven from a main web page and the homeowners simply access the user interface from the iPad to adjust any of the settings.

By deciding which services you want on, and when, C-Bus can help to save power too, by letting you schedule when items such as towel rails, air conditioning, underfloor, or pool heating turn on and off.

Brett says part of the beauty of C-Bus is that it will work with virtually any third-party product and is a simple way to get a home working better for those living in it.

Project: Fendalton House
Home Automation Integrator: Sosimo
Product: C-Bus

To experience C-bus and home automation technologies, visit Schneider Electric’s Vision Studio showrooms or book a digital consultation: pdl.co.nz/showroom

Auckland: Level 2, Building 6, 60 Highbrook Drive, East Tamaki, Auckland 2013
Christchurch: Level 2, 4 Hazeldean Road, Addington, Christchurch 8024