Starr News

There is no point in having a security system if no one knows when it goes off. That is why, for years, companies have offered remote monitoring of those systems for you. But with every doorbell manufacture offering cheap ‘professional’ monitoring of your security systems, why should you come to a professional like Bravas for that service?

Bob Knight once said, “I don’t believe in luck, I believe in preparation.” My guess is that he was talking about basketball, but he could also have been talking about pre-wiring your home. By pre-wiring, we mean all those low-power cables that are going to control light, shades, audio, video, security and other home automation systems.

At Bravas, we recently published our 70-plus page Solution Guide – which you can download here. In this blog, we will review three different ways you can use it to help you make better decisions about how smart you want your smart home to be.

The latest Bravas Luxury Living podcast (available on YouTube) explores working with a company like Bravas. We didn’t mean it to be an advert for Bravas but a resource for anyone working with a technology provider for their luxury home. In the podcast, we interview Ryan Anderson, the CEO of Bravas, and he explored several key learnings from his time in the industry.

On the Bravas Luxury Living Podcast, we were recently joined by Jimmy Paschke, Sales Manager at SurgeX Residential. We discussed many issues around getting the power systems right for your luxury smart home. You can listen to the podcast here. A couple of the ideas we discussed may be worth a deeper dive - Surge Protection and Power Conditioning.

If, like most people, you have been watching more Netflix and Amazon Prime than regular TV, you may be wondering about ‘cutting the cord.’ It seems like a good idea and could even promise to save you money, but there are risks and problems. While there are thousands of blogs covering how to get rid of your cable and satellite TV services, few explain the complexities and downsides. In this blog, we will discuss some of the pros and cons of going without regular TV service.

One of the most significant differences between a well-designed home automation system and a poorly designed one is scenes. Worse, you maybe have no scenes set up at all. In this blog, we will review what scenes are, pick the top 6 every home should have, and talk about getting them right for you. If you think we have missed some, let us know.

The new reality is that many of our meetings going forward are going to be from our laptops. While Zoom calls aren’t the same as in-person meetings, it is still important to put your best foot forward. The person on the other end of the call may not get to appreciate your minty fresh breath or fancy new shoes, but below are some ways you can look great when your meetings can’t be in person.

We are all quickly realizing that we may have to adjust to this new world we live in, not just locally, but globally. With high traffic locations such as office buildings, sports complexes, retail locations, grocery stores, casinos, and more being the riskiest, they are also crowded for a reason; most of these places are essential to live life, to break away from the everyday.

3 years ago, my husband and I completed an 18-month build of what would be considered our primary residence off Florida's southeast coast on a corner alcove with direct access to the Intracoastal Waterway. We hired a dream team of experts in the fields of custom mid-century modern building, architecture & interior design -- with an emphasis on sustainable materials throughout. Taking a nod from Architectural Digest, (as well as a few raving colleagues) we consulted with a lighting designer on how to incorporate human-centric lighting (more commonly referred by its buzzword, circadian rhythm lighting) into our primary bedroom & the kids' adjacent bedrooms -- along with our large, albeit, shared office space downstairs.