A Unified Home Controller

You get an app supplied with almost everything these days: for your (video) door entry system, your heating system, your greenhouse watering and temperature control, your ambient room lighting, your electricity or gas metering device – it’s only a matter of time before you get one for your toothbrush too! Oh … apparently there is one already. Anyway, imagine having just a single control panel for all these building systems instead of a dozen different apps. The developers at Ksenia have done their homework and produced a panel to do just that.

The core of the entire Ksenia system is enclosed in the control panel lares 4.0. It is a real technological revolution because, with a single control panel, an entire security and home automation system can be created. It provides total control of the house, with the ability to manage alarms, entrance doors and gates, energy consumption, lighting, temperature, irrigation, shutters and much more. The Smart Home automation extensions simplify daily routine, and each environment can be managed separately via the free app, which is available for both iOS and Android mobile devices, smartphones and tablets. At any time and wherever you are, you can control your home simply from your smartphone.

The lares 4.0 APP is divided into three sections: the Dashboard, Security (Intrusion, Video Verification, Video Surveillance, Access Control) and Smart Home (Home Automation and a Building Management System).

The dashboard is the main page of the app and first shows the name of the control unit, the contact details of the Installer, the temperatures measured, the name of the location where the control unit is installed, an icon that represents the weather situation in that specific location and, finally, the user’s favorites. The status of the security system can be seen at a glance thanks to the icon located in the center of the dashboard: this can be armed, disarmed, partially armed or in alarm mode. These state changes are also marked in either red, green or blue.

The security section provides complete monitoring of the domotics part and all aspects related to security and video verification by connecting to any ONVIF camera model. The status of the entire system is visible on the dashboard and the alarm system can be quickly armed or disarmed. There is an event log and the status of all sensors can be seen, timers managed, and the details of any faults along with access to the user management are included.

Home Automation
The third and last section is entirely dedicated to the Home Automation section. On this page the user controls all the outputs, assigns categories and has full control of lights, blinds, scenarios, and much more. The application is extremely flexible and also provides two methods of control: a category view where all actuators of a particular type, such as lights, thermostats or gates for example are grouped together, and a page view that shows all the actuators contained in individual rooms. This makes programming easy and provides a detailed view of the entire system.

Lares 4.0 also interfaces with Google Home or Amazon Alexa App, so all the smart devices in your home can be managed simply by using your voice: the lights, shutters, scenarios, the air conditioner and all the other automated systems. What it won’t do, however, is pick up your toothbrush for you.